Kiley

Lazy, no-good, layabout, no-account, do-nothing pack a’ Ne’er-do-wells. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100 camera.)

Yesterday morning (Wednesday, May 20, 2009) was a brunch get-together at a restaurant east of Rochester of a pack of lazy, no-good, layabout, no-account, do-nothing retired employees of Regional Transit Service.
Most are retired bus-drivers, but a few were management.
Our group isn’t organized; just ad hoc.
Word gets spread around through e-mail and phonecalls of future get-togethers.
We all share the experience of having worked for Regional Transit Service, which could be rather difficult.
I used to have to get up at 3 a.m.
Beyond that, the people we were working for were jerks. That included our clientele.
Most interesting to me was the presence of Dan Kiley (“KEYE-leee”).
Kiley and I always did similar work; that is, as little as possible.
At run-pickings, many drivers just took a stab-in-the-dark, and then complained until the pick ended.
Kiley and I would assiduously research the available runs, trying to find what worked the least, and was convenient.
I was even more thorough than Kiley, since I was factoring in logistics.
The ideal logistical arrangement was pull-out, pull-in; pull-out, pull-in. This avoided a relief downtown; three miles and 15 minutes away.
Relieve and/or get relieved downtown and you were adding to portal-to-portal time.
It was either -a) wait for a bus downtown at the Barns, or -b) park your car downtown. I did this for a while, but then the freebie lot threw us out.
And ya didn’t get paid to wait for a bus.
Kiley and I picked packages when I lived in the city.
I lived only five minutes from the Barns, so I could come home and go back five hours later.
Packages generally paid the most, since ya were still drivin’ eight hours after ya started. Anything after that was overtime.
No matter ya might have a five-hour break between run-halves; the law said if ya were still working eight hours after starting, it was overtime.
Packages usually had schoolwork in them; using your bus to pick up schoolkids along a bus-line, and then take them to school.
A large technical high-school had been built on an old landfill west of the city, and it drew kids from all over the city.
Transit was always able to do this work for way less than a schoolbus service, so we did it.
The advantage of such work was that if the school was off, that part of your run was canceled.
Yet we got paid as if we had made the entire run.
Per contract, we were guaranteed eight hours per day; but I got the same paycheck every week, schoolwork or not.
Sometimes your schoolwork got hooked with regular line-service, or to clean up a busy line.
The goal was school-trip only, so we might only hafta work four hours (or so) in the afternoon. —Sleep in and get paid!
Kiley and I always picked work like this: one trip to that technical high-school in the morning, plus additional school-trips in the afternoon hooked to line-service.
If school was off, we were only doing the line-service; maybe four hours.
Some packages were three-trickers; three pull-outs.
Kiley and I avoided those; too inconvenient.
Another factor I had was no technical high-school in the afternoon. Them schoolkids were too sleepy in the morning to be any trouble. But in the afternoon they were wired. I never drove them home.
Another factor was the expressway schtick; it was no fun driving bus if ya couldn’t put the hammer down at least once each day.
A fourth factor was that some lines were easy, and some were killers.
The 700-line (Monroe Ave. and N. Clinton) was easy, as it was so long it needed five all-day buses. At the south end ya might layover about 15-25 minutes.
The last line I did before my stroke, the 800-line (Main St.) was a killer, but had an immense logistical advantage; namely that it relieved right in front of the Barns (which were on Main St.).
I’d have so many passengers I was stopping at every stop — and the entire east end, out-and-back, had to be done in an hour.
I was always late through the east end layover-point, changing signs on-the-fly.
So I no longer saw Kiley after we moved to West Bloomfield in 1990.
I could no longer do packages with the Barns being 35-45 minutes away.
No more schoolwork, and canceled run-segments when school was off.
Eight hours per day of regular line-service; and my last run was eight straight hours — only one pull-out, but get relieved after eight hours right in front of the Barns.
This minimized portal-to-portal, but even then from wake-up alarm back to into the garage was 12 hours — and I got paid for eight.
Getting relieved (or pulling in) at the Barns meant walking right to my car. Catching a bus from downtown to the Barns was 15-20 minutes; a roulette game.
Driving bus was fun for a while, but became irksome with no more packages.
And line-service versus a package was a cut in pay.
We had a good time swapping bus stories.
This all started when I related my infamous Culver Road story:
I’m driving the 800-line east on Main St., and pull up to Main & Clinton, the main stop downtown.
“Hey man; this bus go to Culver Road?”
“Well, depends on whatcha want. Culver Road crosses about eight bus-lines, and one even travels on it.”
“Don’t gimme no crap, man......”
“Okay, suit yourself,” I think. “I tried to help ya.”
“Yeah, I cross Culver Road, but on Main St.”
We proceed out Main St., and finally we come to Culver Road.
“This is it,” I say; “Culver Road. Says so right on the sign.”
“So where’s Sea Breeze, dude?”
“About 10 miles that way,” I say, pointing up the road.
“Aw man......”
“I tried to help ya, but ya ‘bout bit my head off. So I gave up; I cross Culver Road.”
“I used to get that about ‘Westfall Road;’” said another driver; another long road that crosses three bus-lines.
“I’m drivin’ the 50 to Monroe Community College, and it crosses Westfall at its end.
I let the guy off at Westfall, and he askes where Social-Services (Welfare) is. ‘That way,’ I point. ‘See it?’ ‘Aww man...... Ya mean I gotta walk a block? I thoughtcha went to Welfare.’ ‘Yeah, but ya asked for Westfall.’”
Another driver chimes in: “I’m drivin’ the 700, and it crosses Westfall on the way southeast. ‘This bus go to Westfall?’ ‘On Monroe Ave.,’ I say. We go out Monroe and I announce Westfall: ‘this is it; see the sign?’”
“‘So where’s Social-Services?’”
“‘About three miles that way.’”
Amazingly, he didn’t get shot. (Musta been an angel aboard.)
For noisy complaints about poor scheduling from the all-knowing Bluster-Boy, I humblee submit that the bus-scheduling reflected the two rush-hours, which were over eight hours apart.
More buses had to be on-the-road then than around noon.
It wasn’t possible to schedule driver run-times to cover both rush-hours, without working into overtime.
Kiley and I were playing the game to avoid exposure to our horrendous clientele. —Minimizing city runs to maximize suburban and otherwise.
Kiley used the long break to patronize the Rochester YMCA; I used it to run with the dog.
I hadn’t seen Kiley for years — about 19+. And of course my stroke ended all possibility.

For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. —My all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, claims all bus-drivers, like me, are lazy, no-good, layabout, no-account, do-nothings.

RE: “Run-pickings......” —Three times a year (Fall, Winter, and then Summer) the bus-drivers would pick their runs by seniority from a massive schedule. Summer was lighter than the other two, since there was no school.

“The Barns” were essentially the central operating location of Transit. They also were large sheds for storing buses inside.

The “Bluster-Boy” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston.

I still run. Back then I ran at a county park with our first dog, Casey, a female Irish-Setter. —We are now on dog number six, “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s almost four.