Gully-washers

(Ahem........)

It rained quite a bit Wednesday, July 23, 2008; enough that the local TV-news made a lotta hay out of it.
People were e-mailing pictures of flash-flooding willy-nilly to the station.
“Here we see a stopped Regional Transit bus,” the announcer shouted.
Well, the old bus-driver doesn’t think so.
Sure, the camera stopped the bus, but it also stopped the wake it’s causing.
Shortly after I started driving bus, I was driving out Lyell Ave. one night, and an intersection flooded.
Stalled across the intersection was poor José the Jamaican, his 40-foot Flxible Flyer flooded to the hubs.
Blocked everything! (Long as a ship!)
I washed right by.
In 16&1/2 years of bus-driving I discovered that a bus would go through anything.
One night I was driving in a blizzard through snow two feet deep.
By then we were on baldies — drag-slicks on the rear.
No matter, the old sucker kept goin’.
One time I plowed through a 20 foot snowdrift with an artic. Just aimed straight at it, and drove right through it. Blew snow all over.
Once I got an artic stuck in water about 18 inches deep under the Atlantic Ave. underpass.
As I recall, a pull-in detour was in effect because the old Main St. overpass over the railroad tracks instituted a weight-limit.
An artic weighed too much as a unit; although I doubt the wheel-loadings were as much as a regular 40-footer.
So the pull-in detour was Atlantic Ave., and then around the horn back to the barns.
The Atlantic Ave. underpass was long; crossed under at least 10 ladder-tracks of the Rochester yard.
The Atlantic Ave. underpass also drained poorly, so usually flooded.
The flooding was a foot deep when I started — nothing to a bus.
But it went to about two feet, enough to stall out the metallic beige Catalina hardtop in front of me.
So here I am at the exit of the Atlantic Ave. underpass with a stalled Pontiac in front of me. The lane is one lane wide, lined with steel bridge-abutments. I can’t back up; and I can’t wiggle around the Pontiac. All I could do was idle and hope it kept runnin’.
And run it did. Finally the Pontiac was towed out, and I continued on.
“Be glad your air-intakes were above water,” I was told. “If they had taken in water, you’d be in deep trouble. A bus-motor ain’t designed to pump water. It probably woulda blown the motor-casting.”
“Next time we get a gully-washer I ain’t tryin’ the Atlantic Ave. underpass.”

For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.

“Lyell Ave.” is a main street on the west side of Rochester; also a bus-route.

A “Flxible Flyer” is what I called all our buses made by Flxible Coach. We had a large series of about 75 Flxible buses when I started.

An “artic” (“r-TIK”) was a two-section bus powered by one motor. The second section was a trailer connected to the first section by drawbar/bellows. It had a single driver.

RE: “Main St. overpass over the railroad tracks......” —Our bus-depot was on Main St. in Rochester. A railroad passed through the city; now CSX Transportation but then Conrail. (It’s the mainline of the old New York Central Railroad.) Main St. crossed over the tracks on an old bridge that has since been replaced — replaced before my stroke. The Rochester railroad-yard was east of there, and the Atlantic Ave. underpass tunneled under. “Ladder-tracks” are the many parallel yard-tracks, where freight-cars are stored and/or shifted.

Buses were stored at “the barns;” the bus-barns.