This is for you, Brownie

My good friend David Brown tells me he enjoys reading my Transit blogs, e.g. my recent Transit Dream.
Brownie was a life-long employee of Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for RTS. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Dave Brown spent most of his employ in Transit management, although he started like me as a bus-driver.
Brownie was one of the good ones. Some managers were complete jerks, but not Brownie.
I abstained from Transit management myself; I don’t think I could have handled the politics.
I used to always say bus-driving was the best job at Transit; you were pretty much on-your-own.
I probably would have been a life-long employee myself, but a stroke intervened.
It was probably just as well; I was tiring of it.
After we moved out of Rochester I could no longer do the kind of work I had been doing.
Mainly school-work.
Transit supplied school-bus service with regular transit buses, mainly over established bus-routes.
School-work had the advantage that if it was off, you were off.
Yet you were still getting eight hours of pay per day guaranteed by contract, even though you were off.
For example, eight hours of pay for four-five hours of work.
Often your school-trip was hooked to a regular line-service trip, but I avoided those.
If school was off, I wanted the whole morning off.
One run I had was half school-work. If school was off, I got eight hours of pay for only four hours of work, all of which were in the afternoon.
But to do such work you had to live in Rochester.
For years I lived in Rochester, about five minutes from “the Barns,” the locus of Transit operations.
After moving out here to West Bloomfield, I was 45 minutes from the Barns. I had to work regular city line-service with no time off for school off.
Moving also scotched Park-and-Rides, carrying suburban working-stiffs to and from the city from the boondocks.
Park-and-Rides were rush-hour, so usually got scheduled with school-work.
Your morning assignment might be a Park-and-Ride, and your afternoon assignment might be school-work linked to line-service.
An example of this had 2105, a morning Park-and-Ride from Fairport, east of Rochester, hooked with school-work and regular line-service in the afternoon.


(Photo by BobbaLew.)

2105 was one of the best assignments I ever had.
Great passengers; they even gave me a party when I left.
2105 was one of our company’s first use of articulated buses, buses with two segments that hinged in the middle (see picture).
The front part had the motor, and a trailer was attached.
It was all one interior, with the two segments having a large accordion bellows between them.
People sitting in the back got to watch the front part angle into turns. (I never did.)
To me, our artics (“art-TIK”) were our best-riding buses, but you had to make allowances.
They were heavy and slow, and tricky to drive.
The trailer steered, so you had to avoid sharp right turns.
The trailer would step into the adjacent lane, and clout anyone beside you — unbeknownst to you.
I saw it happen once.
I was aware of this, so I always looked before making right turns.
I avoided right-turns, but if I couldn’t I looked to make sure no one was to the left of me.
If there was, I let them clear.
The artics were also awful in the snow.
A regular city-bus wasn’t; all that heavy motor weight was right over the drive-wheels.
I remember being amazed at how well they went.
Snow 18 inches deep, and we kept goin‘ — even on baldies.
Not so with an articulated.
Its motor wasn’t over the drive-wheels.
Its motor was under the floor in the middle of the front part.
With the least bit of snow, it spun its drive-wheels.
So Dave, this is for you......
Inbound from the end, the Fairport Park-and-Ride immediately goes through a low-rent apartment complex.
To exit, you had to navigate a private road.
It was never salted, rarely plowed, and included a steep hill.
So here I am with an artic, an icy hill in front of me.
It started spinning its drive-wheels.
I reversed to try again.
Backing an artic was a hairball — the trailer went where it wanted, not where you wanted.
I only backed about 10 feet, because the trailer was going onto the grass.
I started again, and the drive-wheels began spinning.
The spinning wheels would burn down through the ice to pavement, and advance about four inches.
Smoke was pouring off the tires, but we were about a third of the way up the hill.
We’d burn through the ice and advance about four inches.
Finally I called the radio.
“Woody, do you want me to keep doing this?” I asked. “The tires are smokin’ like a fuel dragster!”
“Keep goin’,” he said.
Took about 15 minutes (four inches at a time), but I made it.

• “The Barns” are at 1372 East Main St. in Rochester, somewhat from downtown. The Barns were large sheds the buses were parked inside. Regional Transit’s operations were conducted in buildings adjacent to the Barns.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• “Park-and-Rides” were trips from suburban end-points, usually through Park-and-Ride parking-lots, where passengers would park their cars, for a bus-ride to work in Rochester.
• “Woody” was a radio dispatcher at Transit during my employ.