Bus Tales » 54

People on the bus

admin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:46:06 +0000

I was on the 54 heading to Downtown St. Paul when we made a stop at W. 7th Street & Grand Avenue. A guy is standing outside the bus asking the bus driver questions. The guy says “Do you go near the Xcel Energy Center”? The driver replies by saying yes. Then the guy asks “Do you go near 5th Street”? Again the driver says yes. Then the guy asks “Do you go near St. Joesph’s”? The driver said “I go to 5th Street, then I turn at that point onto 5th”. Then again, the guy says, “Do you go near the Xcel Center”. The driver says “Yes, I go to 5th Street”.

At this point, everyone, including me, is starting to groan and moan because this guy keeps asking the same questions over and over.

He decides to board and then says “Oh damn, I didn’t know there was people on this bus”.

Everyone on the bus starts laughing, including me. While I was laughing, I thought “It’s the 54, one of the busiest routes on the system. What else do you expect?????”

Surely made my evening!!!!

Recall the horror

admin — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:13:13 +0000

Late one night I was riding the 54 in downtown Saint Paul. It was the usual crowd riding the bus, workaholics & homeless people. After a few blocks I noticed a rancid smell, almost like vomit. I didn’t notice it when I got on the bus, but it was fairly strong. [warning: gross content]

As we got closer to the Dorothy Day Center I noticed a couple passengers getting uneasy (one opened a window) and another moved seats. The smell was pretty bad at this point so I did crack a window myself to calm my stomach.

Someone rang the bell, and as this person was getting off, he passed me. To my horror as he walked by I could see smears of diarrhea and clear fluid all over the seat of his pants and down his pantleg. What I had thought was vomit, was actually some homeless guy loosing his bowels after a night of binge drinking. The smell got worse as you can imagine. Apparently the guy had shit his pants while sitting on the bus – and decided to sit in it until he got to the homeless shelter. Luckily I only rode a few more blocks.

Later when retelling the story to others I heard rumors about this shits-his-pants guy and how he likes to do this especially to women by sitting in the outside seat “trapping” them. I haven’t seen that happen, or the guy since, but it makes me gag whenever I recall the horror.

Screechy Cocka-Doodle-Doos

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:32:45 +0000

This was a few years back, probably early 2001. I got on the 54 in St. Paul, headed home from high school. After paying my fare I looked for a seat and noticed every person on the bus was sitting in the front half of the bus. Trusting that the community of bus riders knew something I didn’t, I sat in the second row.

About ten minutes into the ride an old man in the back pipes up with the best imitation of a rooster I have ever heard. After a few rounds of screechy cocka-doodle-doos, he started in singing a bawdy song about a lady and what she did when you paid her. Then he went back to rooster imitations for a while, and finally fell silent. He got off at St. Clair and headed straight for the West Seventh Liqueur Barrel.

Look deep into my eyes

admin — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:25:18 +0000

Just when you make eye contact with a stranger, do you ever wonder what’s going through that other person’s mind at that moment? Well that’s usually how I think things through, but on this bus ride I met someone who verbalized everything that went through his head.

I got on the bus at Otto and West 7th st. I was on my way to downtown St. Paul to transfer buses so I could make it to Minneapolis. It was around 8 o’clock at night and as soon as I started walking towards the back of the bus, I made contact with this man, there was no attraction just a look you would give when you are getting familiar with your surroundings.

He got up and moved closer to where I sat down. Judging the situation I figured this would be a very long bus ride.

He tapped me on the shoulder and asked me my name, hesitant I told him my name and asked if that was all he wanted to know. From his breath I could tell he was somewhat under the influence of a substance and I wasn’t really interested in what would be said next.

He told me when we made eye contact he saw my past and thought that I was a very strong person and told me that if I kept doing my art I would get through it all. Now I never told him I was interested in art but I am, I attend Art school, how he would know I’m not sure.

I don’t know weither or not I believe this man but I think about it every once in awhile. I truely wonder if some people can judge you the right way, meaning no judgement, I don’t know I just think it’s something to think about.

Here to straighten you out

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:53:39 +0000

Back in the days of Snelling Garage, I was in the drivers’ room when two of Metro Transit’s police came in and started using the phone. I listened for a bit and got curious enough to ask questions when they were done. It seems two youths of about fourteen years of age were riding the 54 to the Mall of America and having some fun trashing the bus. They had some foodstuffs that they were flinging about. An adult male told them to knock it off. They asked him who he thought he was and he told them, “I’m the guy who’se here to straighten you out.” When they went back to their food flinging he grabbed them and roughed them up a bit. And from what I heard it was just a little bit. When they got home they called the police to report this outrage. It seems they believed their constitutional right to vandalize other people’s property had been abridged.

Broken Glass Theory

admin — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:41:45 +0000

It’s not actually a bus story, but rather the comments on the bus stops. Everybody knows now the “broken glass” theory, and it is completely relevant in relations to the cleanliness of the bus stops. It is not just the “face” of the Neighborhood, but a public health issue. It puzzles and saddens me seeing people littering in a public place, and at the same time, seeing indifference of the MTC, the City and the businesses.

The example is the route 54 stop on W. 7th at Maynard in St. Paul. The stop is located next to the Maynard Apartments office, across the Supervalue grocery store. It has had a garbage container for a long time, and most people did use it, but the container disappeared several months ago, and the stop got as dirty as you see in the pictures of the war-torn 3rd-world country. It seems that neither the City nor the bus authorities wanted to take responsibility for the bus stop. I called both agencies, and they blamed each other for the problem.

The place looks cleaner today, but there is still no container for garbage collection (the bus stop on the opposite side does have it). Now, somebody needs to replace shattered glass….