Driving the 3/4 south on Third. A young black American guy and his buddy got on at Marion, and the second one was silent, probably never been on my bus before, but the first guy knows me, fistpound, and he's happy to be in my arena. I'm preparing to turn left, thinking about how acknowledgement builds as it goes both ways- I had greeted them first, leading to the one returning that greeting- but the autopilot part of me is thinking about driving, and notices that the poles didn''t switch onto the turning wire, meaning I have to go out there and fix the poles.

I split the lanes and stop, thinking, there's no choice in the matter, I have to get out there. You may not really want to get out of the seat and run into the street and wrestle the poles back onto the correct lane of wire. But you have to. The only other choice is to sit there all day blocking Third. Gotta do it. I twirl the orange vest on in one slick motion- becomes second nature after a while- twirl it the way you put on your dinner jacket- simultaneously yelling out, "gimme one second folks, I be right back!" Quick check for cars and I'm running into the street. I like to run back there and do it- let them know you care about their time, that you can hustle. 

Out on the street Greg (that's the old African-American fellow we read about here) is on the sidewalk, with a buddy, and he yells out at me, "Whaaat? My friend don't make mistakes!!"
I say, "I don't know what happened!" as I maneuver a pole. Each pole has 40 lbs of air pressure pulling it towards the sky.
Greg: "You musta been thinking about HER!'
I play along, yelling back, "Apparently!!"

I wave a 'have a good one' to him as I run back, bounding onto the coach. That good feeling of knowing people inside saw you yelling with Greg, having a good time at work. It's nice to have friends walking down the street. When those two dudes get off, the second guy is still silent but his silence is receptive. Yes. We're bringing them over, one by one, step by step. One day he'll make eye contact, and soon he'll say 'hi' back to me, and shoot, someday we may even have a conversation. Low defenses, high expectations.

The first guy, the fistpound fellow, says "thank you sir!" There's an enjoyable quality to his "sir," like an actor who you can tell is enjoying himself, caught up in the moment. He's Geoffrey Rush in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, hamming it up and enjoying himself immensely. He's into it, this idea of courtesy. Confucius once said that saying pleasantries does not make one a better man, but it does maintain the goodness you already have. 

Later, Leana (a regular) and I are talking about how she once worked at Jack in the Box on Thanksgiving night.
"They were coming in on Thanksgiving?"
"Yeah."
"What were they doing?"
"They were getting the Jumbo Jack."
"People were getting the Jumbo Jack on Thanksgiving night?"
"Yeah, they all came in and got the Jumbo Jack."
"I hope I'm never in a position where I need to go to Jack in the Box on Christmas to get the Jumbo Jack," I say. Can't rule it out.

A mixed-race teenager and his girlfriend get on, and he's excited by my happiness. They're a good-looking couple. She's dressed casually in a pink sweatshirt and tight jeans, and he's got athletic clothes and a hoodie but a clean-cut look about him, close shaved bald. Seventeenth Avenue.

Now Leana and I are talking about her days working at Jamba Juice. We've moved on from Jack in the Box. She used to work there at at 5am, opening the place at 5:30, and she says, "that was crazy, who wanna get a smoothie at 5 o' clock in the morning!?"
Without thinking I say, "BRAIN FREEZE!" and the teenager laughs, behind me.

Soon he asks a question about where I'm stopping, they're going to Ezell's, and he says, "I love your enthusiasm!" and I say "Thanks, man. It goes both ways. It's good to have people smilin' on the bus like yourselves, people talkin' to people...." He compliments his girlfriend, saying "how could I not be smiling with a girl like this!" She blushes hard, pinker than that sweatshirt she has on. I laugh without commenting. I mention that I havent been to Ezell's in a while, and he hasn't been out here "in a minute," talkin about how good it is- I interrupt his rhapsodic descriptions of beans and coleslaw with "makin' me hungry, man! The temptation! I can smell it but I can't see it!"

I explain why I haven't been to Ezell's (I don't want to become rotund). He says you've gotta live it up, we're only here right now! In his exclamation I hear echoes of myself. I know I've said the same to others, albeit not with respect to fried chicken. I concur, saying this could all end today, before we even get to the end of the block. I tell him about a friend of mine who had a roommate- this roommate was a health nut who worked out, ate the best foods, shopped healthy, rode his bike every day, worked long hours, and lifted weights- until one day recently, when drunk drivers killed him on one of his early-morning bike rides home. Our friend on the bus doesn't respond to this- it's a conversation for another time. I'm ambiguous about the lessons of the story myself. Right now the important thing is him taking his girlfriend out on the neighborhood. A crowd of other people are getting off, but he hears my voice in the melee, and he responds, saying, "you too! Have a good night!" Acknowledgement.

You've gotta take care of the people. I feel they like being acknowledged. When the bus is crammed full, I go over the top with announcements, because it keeps them updated. When you're back there stuck in between a bunch of strange hulking men with John Deere bandannas and attitudes, you want to know what's going on. I'll tell them that the back doors are about to close, or that this is a hard right turn coming up. Green light, hang on. Explaining about transfer points, reminding what route they're on, or just letting them know I'll give them the time they need to get off the bus. "Just holler of you need more time," I said once on a packed 4. "Hollaa," a girl sitting up front said, being funny in a soft voice. The 7 route is long, and if we're hilariously late I'll periodically thank them for their patience ("you guys are awesome") or remind them all to have a good weekend (very important!).

It was one such day on the 7, outbound, packed to the gills on a steamy summer afternoon. "You look hot," a passenger told me as she stepped off. It wasn't a compliment. Both of us were covered in sweat. There is so much glass and retained heat on a Breda; driving the 7 in a summer can be a calorie burning experience. Oh, how I love it. I don't know why, but I love it.  

Pulling into Martin Luther King, I remind myself not to sigh as I see a wheelchair about the size of four grown men. Big guy, older with glasses and a low baseball cap, with clothing so soiled it seemed made more from dirt than any other material. Bags containing who knows what were strapped to every nook of his wheelchair. Bottles in black plastic.  Litter falls off of him as he rolls around on the sidewalk, and a beer can in a small bag clatters off his form and onto the bus floor as he rides the lift up; I place it in the trash can but he wants it back. Maybe it has emotional significance.

We're packed, and he's taking some time getting situated- there's another wheelchair on the coach, who's leaning into the aisle, making it harder for him to rotate his massive, many-splendored form. People everywhere, sitting standing, with grocery bags, purse bags, paper bags, cloth bags, school bags, you name it bags. I have a regular- a smilin' buddy- who's onboard, and he watches me standing there, waiting for the wheelchair to get situated. He cracks a joke. I forget the exact comment, but it was teasingly directed at me and the amount of time we'd already spent sitting at this stop. "Oh, we're waitin cuz a you!" His white teeth shining. He knows it's not true, but knows I'm always in good spirits. Just wants to mess around a little. "Oh, I just like hangin out at this stop," I say, arms spread out. The bus laughs, and it's a warm laugh.

"We gotta get movin," a lady says. "Can't spend all day here." I can't tell if she's serious or not. I smile at her. "Are you givin me a hard time," I ask in a singsong voice. She laughs and says yes. "Alright," I say, finished with buckling him in, "ready to rock and roll." I swiftly dive back in my seat; the motions are automatic now, taking tenths of seconds- lift power off, gear in foward, four ways off, left turn signal, steering column down, hill holder on, left mirror check: go. Into the mic: "Let's get outta here! Back on the road, everyone. Thank you for waiting!" I put the mic down and yell out, with mock gravity, "lunch break is over!" My smiling friend smiles wider.

This wheelchair is a singer. "You can't hit that till you know to sing like that," he observes in a staccato baritone. "No joke," he says to no one in particular, reacting as if someone had offended him. "I can sing."
"I can see that," I say. "Not bad. Say it again, man."  
"You listen. Don't you be laughin'."
"Who's laughin'?"
"Him, right there." He gestures to a silent passenger.
"Oh he's not laughin',"  I say, "he's smilin 'cause he likes it."
"He's laughin'."
"No," a Latina woman says with a thick accent. "He likes it." She understands the need to work with this guy, meet him at his level, to keep things civil: "Keep singing," she says.
Me: "Yeah, don't stop now. Oh, yeah. Gimme more!"

With that he once again informs us that you can't hit that 'til you can sing like that. Thankfully he's not too loud. Passengers seem to understand the need, for safety reasons, to create a non-hostile environment for such fellows. I wonder if the average 7 passenger is by experience more "holistically savvy," as it were, and perhaps better prepared mentally for incidents or strange people. For example, in the fight described in a post below, none of the passengers seemed particularly surprised with what was happening. Had that been on the 238, I feel the bus would've had a collective heart attack.

I also want to get a quick word in about packed buses. Firstly, it's helpful to remember that there aren't any packed buses in Seattle. In a manner of speaking. Even if you have 120 people on a bus that only has 58 seats, which happens here frequently, that does not approach the sheer ludicrousness of full buses in certain Asian countries, whereupon boarding the bus, you relinquish the need to attempt to stay balanced in an upright position, because the people around you are squished so tightly against you that there is no way you could possibly fall. That's a packed bus, my friends.

Secondly, we all know that being in the back of a packed bus can be unpleasant and claustrophobic. Except when it's something else: fantastic. Bear with me. I remember being nestled somewhere in the back of a 72, where the group in the back was making music together, with guitar and human beatbox. Rastafarian lyrics wafted into the air, mixing in with cell phones and conversation and the world-weary tinge of weekday twilight.

Or yesterday, when you (okay, I) are on the back of the 41, standing by the back doors, riding the northbound express lanes home. As we cross the lower level of the ship canal bridge, you look out at the impossibly clear sky, admiring the receding gradient of yellow and blue; you note the beauty of figures silhouetted against that sky, and marvel at the cornucopia of lives on this bus. This could be the whole world, right here. So many wishes and memories and generations and promises, a bunch of unlike minds sharing a world together, united in the common need to get to Northgate and, uh, miss a bunch of connections (Okay, that last part was a joke. One day the Council will let Metro fix the 41 schedule).

You smile at the thought that in this room, for this moment, all classes, genders, and other status markers take a back seat to the equivalent plane; is there a more democratic space in society? Your mind wanders, seduced by politics, but returns to the easy present, the sky getting darker, people reading, people waiting for their girlfriends, people haggard, sad, frustrated, lonely, absorbed, neutral, happy, drifting, laughing. There is something about the totality of it all that you revel in, the all-inclusiveness of it all, the notion that things are perfect by virtue of the fact that they exist. It's out there, far away, and it's inside here too, in the collective core of our beings. Everybody wants to touch something.

First off, real quick– thank you all for the comments you've posted here. I read and answer every comment made. If you post a comment, I will respond to it.

White guy, sitting in the back, maybe 50 years old, scruffy. We're outbound at 5th and Jackson, 4:31pm. He's got a salt-n-pepper mullet and a bad attitude to boot, soiled skin, dead eyes and a quiet but ugly demeanor. Doesn't quite have a full deck of cards.

We're on the 7, and he's sitting in the back by himself, surrounded by brothers, and boy, is it ever the wrong route for him to start dropping the N-bomb. The guys sitting around him, dark-skinned Americans aged between 20 and 40, do not know each other, but together react with verbal disgust at his hateful taunts.

There's a storm brewing.

The bus is full; a hot, sweaty Friday afternoon with a lot of ons and offs at Jackson. I sense unpleasantness from the back, so I say "take it easy everyone, have a good day now." The nice thing about the Breda is you, the driver, can see everything going on inside the coach. The small seats, large mirrors, and spacious layout allow me to have a better understanding of what the vibe in my house is like at any given moment; but even so, it's difficult today. A chaotic bag of sitting and standing passengers, people chatting, getting on and off the bus– it's hard to ascertain what's going on in the back. Is anything going on?

Yes.

The white mullet doesn't know when to stop his slander, and two brothers who didn't even know each other five minutes ago join in shoving him back in the his seat and firmly "lecturing–" that's a polite word for it– him on his manners, where he can go, and what's wrong with him.

"My friends in the back of the bus," I yell into the mic, saying something or other about taking it easy, taking it outside– but my voice has no traction now. You feel the ramping up of the moment, slow-burn anger accelerating, unable to stop or turn, inexorably raising in volume. Mullet tries to stand, incoherently talking, but now it's two, now three, no– five, five men pummeling him, repeatedly reducing his struggling form into the back corner of the bus.

People wondering what's going on in here.

The black men are not yelling, and nor does he– it is simply an animalistic ritual, a commotion of movement and bone, flexed knuckles and groans. A punch to the midsection is loud to us because we know what it means, how it must hurt; but in actuality it makes very little real noise. The soundscape is cluttered more with profanities, the rustle of clothing, other passengers talking, me talking to the coordinator.

Two brothers step off, angry, walking away from the situation. I assume everything's back to normal, and my concentration is focused on clearing the three deadspots on Jackson crossing Fifth avenue, splitting the lanes so I can get around the construction cones, looking for oncoming turning traffic, watching the guys on the sidewalk so they don't step in the roadway, negotiating the bumps in the road, remembering where the deadspots are so I can coast through them with enough momentum, keeping everything smooth for the passengers, listening to what the person at the front is saying, intermittently keeping the schedule in mind, keeping an eye on the passengers inside–

No, everything's not back to normal. Our Mullet Man– gentleman just isn't the right word here– is still on the bus, talking like he never got punched out in his life, let alone thirty seconds ago. The remaining brothers, surprised and disgusted, go to town on the fellow, and can I really blame them? Guy's practically begging for it, and doesn't change his tune. I clear the third and last deadspot there (it's parallel to the neon "open" sign with the picture of a boiling cup) and stop the coach, doors open. People stand up and mill around, some getting off, some not. No one's shocked or very afraid– there's an attitude of "oh hell, another fight on the 7." Somebody rolls his eyes. A woman pulls her groceries closer. A young mother steps outside, rocking her baby, waiting for it to blow over. An atmosphere of concern but not shock. I tell a very confused coordinator on the radio what's happening. "Are you eastbound or westbound?" he asks, as Mullet smashes into a grab bar.

They spend a little more time punching the guy, and then bodily remove him from the bus, in a profane but disciplined manner. Just some guys removing a rabblerouser, not unlike a bunch of upstanding King County Sherriffs. In fact, it's less a fight than an overly severe form of discipline being visited on Mullet.

Mullet, indefatigable and now outside the bus, smashes one of the bus windows, splintering it into a mosaic of shards in a half-second; he raises his hands and middle fingers in a defiant "fuck you" to me, my passengers, and my brothers in the back. "Alright, time to get outta here," I say, to everyone's agreement. Get back on the bus. Time to close those doors before the unsinkable slandering mullet slinks back on.

Several blocks later at 12th, I walk to the back not just to check out the broken window, but also to talk to the one remaining African-American man involved in the pummeling. He's a bigger guy, oldest of the bunch, with cornrows and an oversized sports jersey. He and a few people sitting around him watch me, evidently curious to my reaction. Am I going to ask him for details, tell him to get off the bus, lecture him on punching passengers, ask him to be nice, or what?

"Hey, man," I say. "I just want to say thank you for taking care of that dude. I couldn't have done that myself."
Fistpound, as the tension in the air immediately and completely evaporates.
"Man, I need a transfer for all that, bro." He looks slightly exhausted.
"Oh, you don't even have to ask, man! We got you covered. That's the least I could give you."

I inspect the damaged window and we chat some more. I thank him again; there may have been way, way too much apathetic enthusiasm involved, but he and the others performed essentially the same task a supervisor or police officer would have done, albeit far more quickly.

"And say thank you to your buddies for me."
"They not my buddies, that's just how we do it."
"That's a beautiful thing."
"We gotta help each other out," he smiles.
"Sometimes it takes a village!"

The laughter following is a smile of relief, shared by him, me, and the others watching. Teenage-looking bus driver with a tucked-in shirt and glasses, and a 250-pound hard-staring bouncer of a man, meeting at a shared and special place, building and arriving at an equal plane. The Future. 

A new passenger gets on at Dearborn. "How are you?" he asks.
"Great," I say.

I mean it.

I'm working absurd 16 hour days all this week, hence my smaller presence on the site this week. I've been racking up stories to share- unavoidable, really, when that much time is spent on the road with all my wild and crazy friends on the street.

I did, however want to take a moment and offer an update on our friend discussed in the post entitled Hesitant- that was the one about the east Asian man being held by the police. He showed up a few days later, with his girlfriend in sight as usual. It turns out that he wasn't being arrested, but was involving the police because his girlfriend had been attacked by a couple of teenagers while he was buying drinks. He was standing there while they investigated the situation. "Age fifteen and eighteen, they killed me," she told me later in clipped English, showing me the bruises on her neck. I'm going to assume that by "killed" she meant "hit," as she was still alive when she told me this; I told them to be careful. We all shook hands a bunch of times, and she relayed the story again, and then once more. It was turning into one of those situations where you really do care about them, and you want to keep talking, but you feel the pressure mounting, cold stares from the other passengers, and a mounting antsiness bubbling from the professional side of you that wants to offer good bus service. Call it a psychological bathroom urge- you gotta get outta there. Can't sit around on Graham Street all day.

A short while later they showed up again. They never have fare. It's the 7. The rules are different out there. The continual hovering presence of physical violence in the neighborhood, both latent and actual, reinforces what's very important (staying alive) and highlights what's completely superfluous (chump change). What this couple always has to offer instead are warm smiles and handshakes, which I frankly consider more valuable; the acknowledgement means something. I happily welcome them in every time.

But- here he is, both of them, outbound 12th & Jackson, a lot of color and activity right here, hard shadows from the decreasing sun, and he's waving his wave at me. It's a little different every time- today it's an outstretched straight arm, an intriguing mixture of Black Power salute and Seig Heil Nazi salute- which I excitedly return as I pull up to the zone. He can keep his face stoic, with only his eyes smiling, but I can't help but wear a huge open smile upon seeing him. As he steps on, we begin our regular ritual: peace symbol, two fingers, from him, which I return, as he says "two!" and I say, "two for you! Later!" Then we shake hands. If I give people transfers when they don't have money (per policy) I do it when they get off- it keeps them behaving during the ride. I'm not expecting anything more.

Today, though, he has something up his sleeve- he's holding four sticks of gum, pictured above, which he sticks into my shirt pocket. Smile spreading across his face, watching my thrilled reaction. A few days later he brought two bags of cherries- one for the two of them, and a bag for me. It's obvious they don't have the income to pay $10 a day in travel expenses, and I never asked for compensation- and yet! Gum and cherries! I don't even really chew gum, but I'll take it.

They go to the back and sit together, talking quietly. A glance and a smile. It's about the gesture.