Weeping-cherry

The weeping-cherry tree. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I look outside my bathroom window, and I see what’s illustrated above, our weeping-cheery tree in full flower.
I know that now I’m a widower, it’s my tree, but even though my wife died over a year ago, I still feel it’s our house, on our lawn with our weeping-cherry.
But the weeping-cherry is my doing. Other plants are my wife’s doing, but the weeping-cherry goes back to my driving bus for Regional Transit Service.
For four years I drove 1703, a run from Rochester out East Avenue to the ritzy eastern suburb of Pittsford on the fabled 1700 line.
I’d get a different bus every day, but “1703” was the run-name. I always had the same schedule over the same route.
During the morning rush-hour only two buses covered the route, although there was probably a morning Park-and-Ride for Pittsford.
Two buses covered the line all day.
But during the afternoon rush, a third bus was added, 1703.
It was a nice ride, almost a Park-and-Ride to the boonies.
It was three trips to Pittsford, linked to an early afternoon school trip.
My clientele was great, totally unthreatening.
It was mostly commuters who worked downtown yet lived in Pittsford.
There was Wendell, who worked at the local gas & electric utility, and Ted, who worked at a bank. There were others, but Ted and Wendell are the ones I remember.
Wendell would hold court in the back of my bus, discussing politics and religion (gasp).
They loved having me. Unlike some bus-drivers I was dependable and always on time.
The 1700 being a premier line, I always got good equipment.
Plus I got them all home no matter what. That’s because I was once a bus-passenger myself, and I hated delays.
If a rear-view mirror became loose, I had tools to tighten it myself.
I wasn’t waiting 45 minutes for no mechanic to come out and tighten it. I wasn’t delaying my passengers.
There would be Wendell’s wife waiting at the bus-stop in Pittsford in their beige-metallic Honda Accord.
Wendell and Ted and I always shot the breeze.
Wendell was older than me, but still rode motorcycle like I did.
Often he’d pass me on East Avenue on his motorcycle going home. Sometimes it would be raining, so he’d wish he was with me.
There goes Wendell, no rain-suit, soaked to the bone.
Ted, like me, was a history-buff. He lived on an old trolley right-of-way, so we always jawed the many railroads and trolley-lines that once traversed Pittsford. —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two.
Pittsford also has the Erie Canal.
Ted also told me about his son graduating Vanderbilt University, and also about his flying down to New York City and back in a day on bank business.
I saw Ted not too long ago. He was old and creaky and could barely walk. He was probably in his 50s when I drove 1703, and me in my 40s.
I’m now 69. I wonder if Ted is still alive?
One afternoon we had a horrendous accident. Somebody turned in front of me, and I tee-boned him. My bus rode up on the side of the road, and snapped utility-poles like match-sticks.
The car’s driver got tossed around so much it knocked him out. His car, a Chevrolet Citation, was totaled; bent like a drum — which is what it sounded like when I hit it.
But Wendell and Ted, etc. were more concerned with my welfare, that I was alright — which I was.
And amazingly I wasn’t fired. Often Transit fired anyone involved in a serious accident, his fault or not. —Even the head-honcho came.
I was saved by a truck-driver that passed just before I had the accident. He told my bosses there was nothing I could have done.
(I guess the Citation-driver had awaited the truck’s passing in the left-most eastbound lane; oblivious to my being hidden by the truck in the right-most eastbound lane.)
Wendell and Ted had to be taken home to Pittsford by an extra bus, so my bus could be safely extricated.
I still have the plastic grill-insert from that Citation in my basement. It had been sent flying, so I went back and got it.
Out along East Avenue in Pittsford was a weeping-cherry in a streetside front yard.
Every Spring it would flower and become beautiful.
So when we moved from Rochester to our (my) current home out here in West Bloomfield, I wanted a weeping-cherry.
It’s not an actual weeping-cherry tree.
It’s a graft of a weeping-cherry top, probably on a regular cherry-tree trunk.
A few branches are not weeping-cherry.
That top-most branch is not weeping-cherry. It doesn’t weep, and hasn’t blossomed yet.
But mostly the tree is weeping-cherry.
And to my mind it looks better than the one along East Avenue in Pittsford, which got messy, and wasn’t as big.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012.
• 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.
• “Park-and-Rides” were trips from suburban or rural end-points, usually through Park-and-Ride parking-lots, where passengers would park their cars, for a bus-ride to work in Rochester.