Bus Tales - What’s happened to you on the bus?

I Want My Metro Transit

“Twenty dollars,” the man scoffed with a thick accent, “in Columbia we slit your throat for twenty dollars.” It was a balmy Saturday night into Sunday morning, 1998, and the unfortunate gentleman had just fallen victim to a group of young bus hustlers.

I was living in St. Paul at the time, and was taking the last 16 bus back from Minneapolis. As I waited outside the Gay 90’s where I transferred busses, the usual weekend closing time crowd on the corner of 4th and Hennepin seemed even more feisty than usual. Eventually the bus arrived, and about ten people climbed aboard. As soon as we embarked, a group in their late teens or early twenties began asking if anyone had change for a twenty, so as to pay the then one dollar fare. They found a taker in a middle-aged fellow sitting with his girlfriend. Naturally, when he first gave them the twenty dollars in change, they reciprocated by jumping off the bus. The man then produced a knife and chased after them. Exactly what happened outside I couldn’t tell, but after a few minutes the transit police arrived, questioned the man, and removed the surveillance tape from under one of the front seats. The knife wielder was then allowed back on the bus, and we continued on our eastward journey. This is when the story’s opening comments were uttered, and they seemed to greatly unnerve a rather uptight fellow who was sitting, with a friend, up by the driver.

“Did you see that,” he asked in amazement, “that guy just pulled a knife, he can’t be on the bus.” After a long silence, the driver countered that, “Well, they did take his money.” “Either he gets off or I’m getting off,” he threatened. Apparently bus drivers don’t like ultimatums, as she replied by pulling over at the nearest corner and depositing the whiner and his companion on the sidewalk. I felt like applauding, or something.

Yes, it’s moments like these that make the Metro Transit worth riding—worth waiting on street corners in subzero weather, necks craned toward the horizon, for fifteen or twenty minutes; worth spending three or four hours to accomplish what our car driving friends would wrap up in forty-five minutes; even worth carrying groceries or laundry on your back while Coup de Villes speed by playing your favorite song, perhaps with an ex-girlfriend in the passenger seat. Because unless your taking the 575 Express to 110th Avenue in Bloomington, the bus is really an extension of the street. It’s people who, for some reason or another, are in a socioeconomic situation which prevents them from owning and/or driving a car. Many are economically challenged to begin with, victims of the never-ending circle of poverty. Some are temporarily down on their luck, saving up to get their cars fixed, or to get their licenses back. A few are environmentally conscious, if not bussing, then biking—in February. But whatever their reasons for riding, transit customers comprise a unique subculture, and probably any one of them could tell a novella’s worth of outlandish bus-related tales. But who better to talk to, I thought, than the bus drivers themselves?

It was a late Friday afternoon in January, and the northbound 4 had surprisingly few passengers. Judging by the driver’s giddy tone of voice as he announced the upcoming streets, it seemed like he might be in a mood to chat. “Hi,” I offered, “how’s it going?”

“Better and better each minute it gets closer to quitting time,” he replied.

“Say, uh, I’m trying to write some kind of article about crazy stuff that happens on the bus, and I was just wondering, like, what’s some of the craziest stuff you’ve ever seen?”

“Well, that depends on what you mean by crazy,” he mused. “There’s one guy who always wears a football helmet and pads, and he also brings his own seatbelt that he wraps around himself and fastens by closing it in the window. I mean, I didn’t think I was that bad of a driver.”

The driver, it turned out, had been driving for nineteen years, and was a veritable goldmine of Minneapolis bus lore. He now works the relatively calm day shift, but like most new drivers, started out on the late night downtown routes. On one of these nights, in the 1980’s, a man climbed aboard who was not only wasted, but arterially bleeding from a knife wound to the leg. “Just promise me no police,” the man requested, blood gushing from his thigh with each heartbeat.

“No problem,” the driver assured him, as he repeatedly pushed the silent emergency button. Meanwhile, the intoxicated wounded man started going into shock, only to be tackled and subdued by a Vietnam Vet, for whom the incident had triggered a kind of flashback. When the police arrived on the scene, a rubber gloved officer warned about the risk of getting a new disease called AIDS from the pints of blood which were spurted about the bus.

Perhaps his most dramatic tale involved an incident which happened during the five o’clock rush hour, with a full load of passengers. A young man got on and walked straight past the fare box without paying. The driver shrugged it off and kept going. A mile later, the man walked to the front as if to disembark, but instead paused right next to the front door, took out a handgun, and fired four or five missing shots at a group of people standing on a street corner a full block away. Courageously, the driver momentarily let his foot off the brake, causing the shooter to lose his balance and lunge backwards. The would-be assassin then ran off the bus into a nearby waiting car. “Looking back,” he reflected, “I might not have been so brave.” Growing up in the suburbs, where almost everyone had a car, driving a bus was for him a “social education.” He suggested riding the 5, 16, and 19 routes around bar close for a week. “You’ll have more stories than you’d ever want.”

In fact, according to crime statistics I obtained from Robert Gibbons, head of public relations for the Transit Police, in the years 1995, 2000, and 2005, the three routes with the most police calls were consistently the 5, 16, and 21, ranging from 400 to 700 per years. However, the number of what Gibbons called “serious crimes”—robberies, assaults, and homicides—made up a relatively small percentage. The only two homicides both had asterisks next to them saying the people didn’t actually die on the bus, but later due to complications incurred while they were onboard. Interestingly, this was also the case with a death that happened in the summer of 2007.

On a lighter note, I recall another trip on the 16 to St Paul, when the driver was constantly joking over the microphone. As we approached a stop where a lone person waited, he instructed us all to applaud when she got aboard. The look on her face was rather priceless. A friend of mine told of a time she was running after a bus on a cold winter night, caught up with it near the corner of Nicollet and Washington, but the driver wouldn’t open the door because it wasn’t officially a bus stop. She then ran out in the street, in front of the bus, forcing the driver to stop and let her aboard. I once ran after a bus on Nicollet Mall, catching up only enough to pound briefly on the window. The driver stopped, but when I got on, dryly said, “Please don’t bang on the windows, sir.”

Another time, I was taking the 19 from the West Bank to downtown. A couple was rather audibly discussing which stop to take, so as to be closest to their destination, the now defunct Liquor Warehouse. As they walked by me to the back door, I gave them a nod and a smile. “Hey, how you doing,” the man inquired, then did kind of stopped and turned back to me. “Why you smiling,” he asked nobly, “you got a million dollars?” I just nodded and smiled again, but right after they stepped off, laughed out loud. “Man,” I thought to myself, “if a had a million dollars I sure as hell wouldn’t be riding the bus. Or would I? If I did, I’d have to be either crazy or insane. Like a fellow I overheard one day passionately explaining to a young lady that he was only taking the bus to go pick up a check for a hundred thousand dollars, and then go pick up his car, and would she like to come with?

I have my driver’s license back now, and I love it. But I still think back fondly about my ten or so net years on the Metro Transit system. Occasionally I’ll leave my car somewhere if I’m drinking, and take the bus to pick it up the next day. I guess for me, you could say it’s like an old friend, and if you’d been on the bus one morning in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1963, then you’d really have a story to tell.

Tale by Steve Bakken, posted on December 28, 2007, Tagged with aids, characters, crime, gun, handgun, hustler, knife, memories, microphone, money, police, seatbelt

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