Pig-Out!

Chomp-chomp-chomp! (Photo by Ron Palermo.)

Yrs Trly attended another gathering of the so-called “Transients.”
“Transients” is what the guy who daycares my dog calls us retirees of Regional Transit Service.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
Despite there being a fair likelihood I’ll be interpreted as negative about these get-togethers, I’ll say I always feel a bit out-of-it.
“That because you’re not the bus-driver type?” my doggie-daycare friend asks. “Not macho hard-driving?”
To my mind, one couldn’t be “hard-driving” and succeed as a bus-driver. Be that you’ll likely get fired.
You had to be meticulous and conscientious. Loose cannons got mugged or they had accidents. They didn’t last.
My wife used to say I was perfect for the job. Cantankerous yet meticulous, and smart enough to use guile-and-cunning to get away with quite a bit yet avoid mugging.
The “Transients” are not an official organization. We’re just people that worked at Transit during the ‘80s and ‘90s and beyond, and share the common experience of having worked there.
It was a difficult job. We were driving rattle-traps on streets amidst driving insanity: “oh look Dora, a bus. PULL OUT, PULL OUT!”
And I gotta stop nine tons of hurtling steel without tossing my passengers out of their seats.
We were also negotiating an upper management that was difficult. We were always at war with them, and they with us.
There also was our clientele, which could be threatening. The idea was to not get mugged, or worse yet shot.
95 percent of those you carried were okay, but there were always the others.
I could tell stories.
I had one run I hated because I feared a passenger. I couldn’t refuse him — I had to pick him up.
I suppose if I felt threatened I could pass him up, but I loathed doing that, having once been a bus-passenger myself.
Plus he’d probably blow me in, and management, safely sheltered in their Administration-building, could fire me.
The Transients is comprised of both retired bus-drivers and management, although lower-level management, those that parried street madness.
I brought along my camera, but never took anything. (I’m using another guy’s picture.)
It would have been just another photograph of us Transients pigging out in a buffet.
I’ve done it before, “Gathering of Eagles.”
HO-HUM! Sit quietly and listen to others jawing.
It’s somewhat pleasant. Occasionally I interject remarks about our shared experiences.
Time passed.
I was eating nowhere near as much as my old cohorts.
For me it was just baked-beans, a slice of pizza, and macaroni-and-cheese.
The guy across from me had a gigantic plate of food. Chicken-legs and mashed potatoes and stuffing. He ate a lot, but a lot went uneaten.
Not this kid! My mother survived the Depression. Little children are starving in China. Clean your plate!
Would I continue to attend these gigs?
More than likely!
I’m out-of-it, but in my humble opinion all of us were.
It seems like all of us were social outcasts, the losers of society.
My 12th-grade Social-StudIes teacher told me I’d never amount to anything; my sixth-grade teacher bemoaned so much wasted potential.
So I became a bus-driver. It was supposed to be temporary, but I did it 16&1/2 years.
And it paid for this here house I’m in.
And left me with old coworkers I consider friends.

• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.