Hit and Miss

You can't win 'em all.  I have picked my shots so far.  I bombed with today's driver Henry.  I decided to sit in the seat right behind the driver.  Although it's marked: "for elderly and disabled people", I knew this was my best shot to really get some quality time with Henry.  I wanted to probe his mind and heart, to find out what made him tick.  It wasn't easy.  Greyhound has put a plexi glass barrier behind the driver's head and the first seat.  This is because an unstable Eastern European passenger slit the throat of a driver near McMinnville, Tennessee right after 9/11.  People were worried that there was a terrorist connection but it turned out to just be a mentally ill guy acting alone.  It was tragic.  But, the consequence is that the days of sitting behind the driver and talking his head off are pretty much over.
I had to lean my head down and try and talk through the crack in the glass.
Me: Henry can you hear me?
Henry: silence
Me: How long have you been driving?
Henry: Too long
Me: Are you from Richmond (where our bus left from this morning)?
Henry: No
Me: Well, I'm going around the country for the next 30 days trying to get to know the passengers and drivers.
Henry: Ok.
And that was that.  Henry did a great job driving.  Unlike the last two drivers: Ken and JM, Henry kept the bus from weaving and bobbing like a cruise ship.  I kept peeking over his shoulder to monitor his speed and to make sure that the bus's PSI stayed over 75 because the sign next to the gauge said, "make sure the PSI stays over 75".  It was usually around 120.

A couple of realizations:
1) On Greyhound's website, they have been advertising this new, sleek, all black luxury liner.  It purports to have WiFi, places to plug in your cell phone and "increased leg space".  So far, I have been on crappy buses.  I haven't seen one of these new buses.  I'm not sure they exist.  The ones I've ridden so far smell bad.  The seats have a greasy film of God knows what and I want to bathe immediately.  They are dirty and look like they've already done a tour of duty on the streets of San Salvador.  I'm hoping this improves.
2) 97% of Greyhound passengers and drivers smoke.  So, at every stop, these nicotine hungry nomads file out of the bus like they're on a mission.  A plume of smoke surrounds the bus and people stand out in the rain in Monroe, Virginia enjoying their cigarettes as much as a death row inmate on the eve of his execution.

Thankfully, Henry was the exception more than the rule.  Most of the people I've chatted up have been pleasant and eager to share their stories with me.  I met a girl who was going from Memphis to Knoxville for her junior year at UT.  It made me kind of sad that her parents weren't driving her to school.  I learned that her mother recently passed away.  Her father is the assistant manager at a Piggly Wiggly in Memphis and was happy to drop her off for her freshman year, but told her, "I'll be back in Knoxville for your graduation."

The highlight of my trip thus far, hands down, was the traveling companion who joined me in Knoxville.  His name was Arthur, but told me to call him Art.  Here's Art and I in our seats, about 12 rows back:

This could be the funniest human being I've ever met.  All I said to him when he sat down next to me is, "where you headed"?  And then it began.  For the next 8 hours, until the carbon monoxide fumes took over and he passed out between Lynchburg and Charlottesville, Art didn't stop talking.

I'll save most of it for the book, but I'll share a few pearls.  Art is someone that I would call a theory guy.  He has a theory about everything.

In Bristol, Tennessee, there is a huge, roughly 15 foot tall guitar downtown.  At the bottom it says something like "Welcome to Bristol, Tennessee".  I said, "Art, look at that guitar".  "That belonged to Elvis", he chuckled.  "You know when Elvis started out, he wanted to sing gospel music.  He was good at it.  But that no good manager made him do rock and roll.  Elvis didn't want to do that.  Everybody says Elvis died on the shitter.  But you heard about that guy that dug up his grave, right?  He went out there one night and dug it up.  When he opened the coffin, Elvis wasn't in there."  Art's steadfast conviction in the Easter morning tale led him to continue: "I think the pressure got too much.  He staged his death and he's living on an island somewhere.  That's what all that fame will do to 'ya.  He's probably in his 70's now".

He also is convinced that Hillary Clinton was personally responsible for the Oklahoma City bombings because "that building they blew up is where they were keepin' all the records of her criminal investigation.  She didn't want them snoopin' around and set all that up."

Osama Bin Laden is alive and well and most likely in the custody of the CIA.  "You know they've got him.  He's their prodigal son.  The CIA taught him everything he knows.  The government just don't want you knowin' about it.  They'll hang on to him forever."

And, my personal favorite, "Here's what I don't get about them terrorists.  They blow theirselves up and people are tellin' them that they're gonna go to heaven and get a bunch of virgins.  The only thing their gonna get is the devil's pitchfork right up their a-hole".

It was a tearful farewell in Richmond this morning.  Art was headed to Philadelphia and then to New Jersey to some godforsaken impound lot to get a tractor trailer back that had been stolen.  I was off to New York.  I scribbled as many notes as I could so that I wouldn't lose the bulk of Art's view on the world.  He may be a little, or a lot off base, but he's a funny guy.  He served our country in Vietnam.  He has a wife and two kids and he busts his rear driving a truck for 3 weeks at a time.  He only gets to go home to Michigan for "between 36 hours and 3 days" at a time.  God bless him.

I'm going to sleep like Rip Van Winkle in my Manhattan hotel room tonight.  Then, I think I'm going to start heading West.  I've had enough of New York.  It smells like Tijuana out on the sidewalks.  People are just barrelling around and not really talking to each other.  I'm ready to see what folks in Minnesota are doing.

Stay tuned...