Dana

Art Dana. (His trademark blue “Ford” hat is visible [see below].)

“It was a religious, non-religious ceremony,” my wife observed as we walked out of the Art Dana (“DAY-nuh”) memorial service toward our car.
Art, recently deceased, was the retired bus-driver from Regional Transit with fairly severe Parkinson's disease.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS), the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY and environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Art's wife died four years ago, so he lived with his sister in Pittsford. He was 69.
Art and I had similar interests, particularly hot-rod cars and trains, although in Art’s case it was model-trains. I prefer the real thing.
His memorial service was in a chapel at White Haven Memorial Park near his home in nearby Pittsford. White Haven is a cemetery, but also has granite burial-vaults.
“Uncle Art told me what it was like to belong to a motorcycle gang,” said a relation in a eulogy of sorts.
I got the impression relation was pretty straight.
Nice as he was, I don’t think the straights would have approved of Art.
Art went his own way, pursuing interests that would inflame the straights; e.g. motorcycles and hot-rod cars.
His baby-sister, the one he lived with, also delivered a eulogy of sorts.
“Is that my baby-sister I hear?” she reported he always said when she came home from work.
He had to be dependent on them, his baby-sister and her live-in boyfriend (or husband; I never knew) “Johnny.”
That was Art. “Hughzey,” he’d say; or “Brother Hughes.”
Weak and frail but always smiling.
“Arturo,” I’d respond.
He always seemed thrilled to see me.

Joe Libonati.

“Libonati” (“lib-ih-NODD-eee;” as in “odd”), I cried, as we walked across the parking-lot.
That was Joe Libonati, another retired RTS bus-driver Art was friends with.
Libonati was after my time at Transit.
It was Libonati and me that tried to extract the steering-box out of Art’s hot-rod 1949 Ford (pictured below).
“Did you bring that Camaro?” I asked Libonati.
“No; that car’s just to look at, not to drive,” he answered.
“Heaven forbid a drop of rain get on it,” his wife observed.
It’s a new black Camaro with a Corvette engine. —I’ve never seen it.
“This all seemed so sudden,” we said.
“We never knew what happened,” I said.
“Art fell a few times,” Libonati said; “and broke a collar-bone.
We went to a restaurant in the Camaro, and when we returned home he dropped like a stone in the driveway.”

The last hot-rod — that’s Art driving.

“At least he’s in a better place,” Libonati’s wife said.
“I don’t know about that,” my wife said later. “Far as I know, this is all you get.”
A small wooden cremains urn was on a table in front of the lectern, Art’s blue “Ford” baseball cap atop it (see picture above).
I bet I get the same; a cremains urn with my striped railroad engineer’s cap atop it.
Art was always wearing that hat. Ford did indeed build some of the best cars to become hot-rods.
Their wedding-picture was also on that table.
“You can tell they’re from our era,” my wife said. “Look at those glasses and the hair.”
“He looks like Woody Allen,” someone said.
“More like Buddy Holly,” I said.
Strains of “Not Fade Away” wafted through my head.
When I first started driving bus, Art had a pony-tail. It got him in trouble with management.
“Uncle Art also told me what it was like to drive bus,” relation also said.
I bet that caused a few gasps.
“Three o’clock in the morning? I could never do that!”
Sadly it seemed a large portion of Art’s life was left out of that memorial service, his job driving bus so many years.
But not many RTS people were there.
The service ended with recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
Funny how religion always gets dragged into these death-things.
I bet Art never darkened the door of a church his entire life.
Although he kept floating strange ruminations by me.
Like “I bet others were here before us.........”
Regrettably I could not respond favorably.
“Art was a happy man,” his sister kept saying.
This was true, and it rubbed off on all those lucky enough to have met him.
And he fell into bus-driving, a job that could be irksome, but payed fairly well, and could be finagled to be pleasant and bearable.
“It paid for my house,” I always say. And it allowed Art to pursue his various interests, including his beloved cottage in the Thousand Islands.
Art and I were different people.
He loved hunting and fishing, and I don’t.
But we were both car-guys, smitten by what the internal-combustion engine and gasoline could do.
And we were both dog-persons. We both knew and appreciated that.
We both also married well.
What I say now is that Art is lucky enough to have avoided the possible consequences of his enthusiasms, rising sea-levels, unbreathable atmosphere, etc.
And also the possible decline and fall of social cohesiveness.
That self-righteous fat-cats put an end to people like Art and me.
He also avoided the nursing-home.

• “Pittsford” is an old ritzy suburb southeast of Rochester.
• “Hughzey” is me, Bob Hughes.