Dreamin’

“It’s too bad I’m retired, and no longer have a job,” I said to my wife in a dream.
My wife died well over a year ago, but she’s always alive in my dreams.
“I’d feel more like living if I had a work-schedule to follow,” I said. “Even Transit might be more pleasurable than having to come up with things to do every day.
I really miss drivin’ those 500s,” I said, tearing up.
My wife put her hand on my shoulder.

A bat-wing Flxible-Flyer (not RTS — the front-bumper is different too). (The bat-wings are the signs along the top-edge of the bus; RTS had these.)

The 500s were buses made by Flxible.
In my dream a 500 was roaring by, wound to the moon, driver riding high.
Our 500s were fairly simple. Basic bus with a two-speed auto-tranny and V6 6-71.
They leaned a lot in curves, and rode fairly hard.
But they were great fun to drive.
You’d floor the accelerator, and off you lumbered. The racket was a thrill.
And you were right there up ahead of the front-wheels, ridin’ high.
They’d go through anything; 18-inch snow once.
We also had GM buses, but they weren’t as much fun. —Except they cornered fairly well; didn’t lean as much.
But they’d cripple at the slightest: all kinds of sensors that shut down the bus.
The 500s had sensors too, but let you keep operating even with a “hot engine” or “lo oil” light.
If a bus crippled, there you were, trying to explain to Granny why she’d have to miss “Oprah.” (Granny might bop you over the head with her cane!)
I hated crippling a bus; primarily because long ago I’d been a bus-passenger myself.
My career driving transit-bus started May 20th, 1977.
Turnover in bus-drivers was horrendous, so I quickly moved up the seniority-list.
The job was supposed to be temporary, but paid quite well.
Our union had negotiated a cost-of-living escalator.
Only four survived my driving class. We started with five, but one couldn’t stand it.
Out of those four, two were gone in not too long, one fired and one quit.
There were at least two classes right after me, maybe three. Three classes is 15 behind me.
I found driving a bus to be a joy, particularly the 500s. Mastering the operation of a large vehicle was fun.
What mattered was placing the back-end. Since it didn’t steer, it crabbed inside the front-end. It could climb curbs and take out utility-poles.
You see this with tractor-trailers, semis.
The driver puts a huge swing on the truck to make sure his trailer doesn’t hit things.
It’s the same with a bus.
The rear-wheels are 33 feet behind the fronts on the average 40-foot bus, so you have to drive the front-end so the rear won’t hit things.
And with a bus you always had the accelerator floored.
You had to. It was the only way to get it to move.
But of course there was much more to driving bus than operating the vehicle.
You were parrying the public, usually the dregs, who could be capricious and difficult.
We bus-drivers had an unwritten rule: “Don’t get shot!”
For that reason a lot of madness got overlooked, and rules were broken.
That comment about Granny bopping me over the head is not made up — it actually happened.
I could tell stories; I drove bus 16 & 1/2 years.
By 16 & 1/2 years I was tiring of it: too much madness.
My stroke ended it. I retired on disability, but recovered quite well.
I had driven everything interesting, and was now just parrying the public.
And the 500s I started with were gone.
504 was my favorite, a so-called “soft-seater 5.”


Not an RTS bus, but similar to 504 — it has the air-conditioning blister.

504 was one of our original “Park-and-Ride” buses, one of only six with air-conditioning.
Those air-conditioned 5s, 501 through 507, had three-speed over-the-road automatic transmissions.
We had six other soft-seater 5s, 571 through 577, but they were two-speed like the city 5s, and were also governed like the city 5s to 55 mph.
Hit 55 on the expressway, and the motor went away. 55 was all they would do.
501 through 507 weren’t governed.
507 I never saw; it apparently had been destroyed.
501 through 506 I drove often, since I would pick rural runs. —Rural runs were much more pleasant than city runs.
But I preferred 504.
Apparently 504 had been re-engined with a fresh 6-71, so it went like stink.
504 was good for 65-70 mph on the expressway, even with the air on. Glorious! Ridin’ high. Boomin’-and-zoomin’.
I used to say drivin’ bus was no fun unless you could boom-and-zoom at least once every day.
I also used to say 504 was the one I was making payments on.
Every afternoon I’d walk from our parking-lot through our bus-barns before pulling out my rural-run.
Looking for 504, and if I found it, could I get it out?
Often I had to move buses to get out 504, and sometimes I had to back 504 out of the barns.
Backing a bus took skill and faith. You also had to make plenty of noise with your horn. We didn’t have backup beepers then. —Plus you couldn’t see behind the bus.
The guys in middle-management who assigned buses loved me. Transit had considerably expanded its Park-and-Ride services before I started, and got 35 buses to accommodate. Three-speed ungoverned over-the-road 8-71; our 400s.
So when a driver reported to pull out his country Park-and-Ride, he’d bellow for a 400.
Yet here I was asking for 504.
504 was better than most of our 400s. It was more powerful and faster.
By that time our 400s were wearing out.
I remember riding out to a car-dealer to pick up my repaired car.
I sat in the back with other passengers.
That 400 hardly ran. Every time that thing upshifted it sounded like the tranny was gonna come through the floor.
That poor bus-driver had to take that thing all the way out to the boondocks? It was a cripple waiting to happen, and it was cold.
There was one good 400, 436. But all the other 400s were douche-bags.
I used to say 436 was the one I’d steal.
During my final year at Transit, before my stroke, I became intimately involved with my bus-union.
I started doing a voluntary union newsletter on my computer with Microsoft Word©. I’d generate the newsletter, have my wife print it on her laser-printer where she worked, and then copy each page on the union’s copier, perhaps 400 copies per page.
Then a fellow union-member and I would arrive in the Drivers’ Room at 4:30 a.m. to pass them out.
It was a marriage made in Heaven. A confident word-slinger (me) generating words.
I’d write long bus-stories I ran in the newsletter, write-ups of my various experiences driving bus.
The newsletter had immense power. That fellow union-member was distributing that newsletter to various local politicians that funded Transit.
And the politicians would read it, since it was an interesting read.
For once the union’s side of things was getting out; the opposite of “everything’s hunky-dory” from Transit public-relations.
If a bus broke apart and fell off a lift — it happened — we cartooned it. We also cartooned some of the insanity of our passengers — the muggings, the floozies, etc.
We also cartooned some of the insane promulgations of Transit management.
The end result is some politician would call up Transit public-relations and ask “What’s going on down there? You were telling us everything was hunky-dory, yet I have this union newsletter that implies it isn’t.”
A copy of my newsletter went directly to the Transit head-honcho. What fires did he have to put out this time?
He’d thereafter call in his head of public-relations, and ask why I was doing a better job.
That public-relations head had a gigantic salary, and was supposed to produce a glittering and self-congratulatory house-organ every two months.
Yet he often failed. We might see that house-organ twice a year.
Of course he failed. He was driving a desk and guzzling free company coffee.
Yet here I was, a mere bus-driver, producing this voluntary newsletter, which everyone loved, even people in lower management.
And mine was monthly, not bimonthly. I’d list birthdays, etc.; stuff the house-organ should have listed.
My stroke ended it, as it did my bus-driving.
People probably thought that newsletter was the cause of my stroke, but it wasn’t, even though it caused late nights and was struggle to put out.
I had an undiagnosed heart-defect, since repaired.
So as I recovered from my stroke, my recovery-team asked me what I wanted to do.
Did I want to return to bus-driving? No I didn’t! What I wanted to do was something similar to my newsletter, word-slinging.
So I was taken to the Daily Messenger newspaper in nearby Canandaigua to be considered as an unpaid intern.
I was allowed on, and after a year began actual paid employ.
My position at first wasn’t slinging words, although they began publishing a weekly column by me.
My pay was peanuts compared to Transit. My column was no charge.
I was encouraged, and soon began computer-tricks.
After a couple years, an advisor from my stroke rehabilitation team showed up, and asked me again if I wanted to return to bus-driving.
“Absolutely not!” I told him. That newspaper-job was the best I’d ever had. —Happiness was more important than good pay.
In the end I was doing the newspaper’s website, and generating pages of copy for print. A lot involved computer-tricks that made such copy possible.
I had created various computer-functions that saved time — all because it was technically interesting.
But having driven bus so many years I find myself having bus-dreams.
And I miss those old 500s.
This morning’s bus-dream (two days later) was piloting a bus over a raggedy-ass rat-race like I was doing just before my stroke.
But at least this dream was sensible, instead of driving a bus through contorted hallways, and into cul-de-sacs I couldn’t escape.
It was on Transit’s north-south 500-line, busy taking malcontents out to “Wuh-fay,” our county’s Welfare-building.
Before my stroke I was driving the 800-line, Main St. through Rochester.
It was awful. Eight continuous hours of stop-at-every-stop, and no break at all except once at a hospital.
Straight-eights were rare; only three out of hundreds of runs.
Our union only allowed those straight-eights because a few drivers wanted them. Our number-one in seniority had one, and another old head had one.
By then I was about 30th in seniority — out of about 250 drivers.
Most drivers wanted a lunch-break.
The only advantage to that line was it relieved in front of the bus-barns. I could walk directly to my car in the company parking-lot.
I wasn’t being relieved downtown, and waiting for a bus back to the Barns.
My dream had my wife in it, which tells me it’s a dream.
My wife is gone, and no longer shares the bed.
I reach over, and no wife.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• “Flxible,” not “Flexible.” — Flexible-Flyer is the sled (I had one as a child, fastest sled in town).
• “Transit” (RTS) equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
• “Tranny” is the transmission on a motor-vehicle.
• A “6-71” is a six-cylinder diesel engine of 71-cubic-inch cylinders. “8-71” is eight cylinders. (Other cylinder displacements were made; for example 53 cubic-inches, and 92 cubic-inches. [Our later bus-engines were turbocharged 6-92.]) —Diesel-engines were first made inline; for example a 4-53. Later they were made as Vs; for example a V6 6-71.
• “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.
• “The Barns” are at 1372 East Main St. in Rochester, large sheds for storing buses inside. An operations administration building was attached. We bus-drivers always said we were working out of “the Barns.”
• RE: “Relieved.......” —When your driving-shift ended you were relieved by another bus-driver, if the bus ran continuously all day long. (The opposite was to “pull-in” back to the Barns.)