Healthy food is what I’ve been eating lately, but there’s a limit to how much ‘healthy’ a fat man can stand. Breakfast at Mrs Rigby’s popped into my mind and wouldn’t go away, so I pulled some pants on and walked 200 steps to the bus stop, down the street from my house.
Usually I wait alone for my southbound #99, but a man was already there, and I nodded at him, to signal acknowledgment without inviting a conversation. He didn’t get the signal, and started talking, telling me how much he hates riding the bus and why. I continued nodding and somewhat listened, but also peered through the hole in the fence.
I love the hole. On the other side of the street, new houses for rich people are under construction, but on our side there’s a row of older houses, and where one house used to be, a tall wooden fence with a slat missing. You can’t see over the fence, but through that missing slat you can see the where once, there was a house. It’s only tin cans and broken bottles back there now, and patchy grass, and the old foundation, and the weathered, slightly leaning shed that used to be behind the house that used to be there.
That empty lot intrigues me, and I always look through the missing slat, and wonder about the house that isn’t there, and the people who once lived in it.
♦ ♦ ♦
That talky rider shut up when the bus came, and there was only one interesting character on my first ride. He was an old man, talking to himself so softly it was only audible when the bus was stopped at a traffic light or picking up passengers.
He was seated one row behind me on the opposite side, so at the next stop I leaned diagonally in his direction, hoping to overhear his conversation with himself. I heard it, but I’d been mistaken. He wasn’t talking to himself, he was talking to God. Louder than whispering but quieter than talking, he was reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
At the next stop, I leaned his way again, as he was finishing the recitation. “…For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.”
Then he took a breath, and started again, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name…”
The bus lurched forward, and his prayer disappeared into the rattles and rumbles.
♦ ♦ ♦
At the end of the #99 line is the transit center, where everybody except the driver steps off the bus. Maybe you’re not a bus person, so I’ll explain: A transit center is where several or many bus routes converge, making it easy to switch if your trip requires two bus rides, like my trip to Mrs Rigby’s.
It would be a few minutes before the #560 pulled up, so I stood and waited. You want a seat? Well, the transit center has benches, but usually they’re covered with other people’s trash, or trashy other people, and today it was both.
Again with the standard disclaimer: Most people riding the bus are mostly ordinary. But on a bus or at the bus station, you share the space with other people, which can include the poor, the homeless, the drunk, the addicted, the down-and-outers, etc.
Several such folks were loitering at the transit station. A man in a suit and carrying a Bible walked eagerly toward me, intending to tell me that Christ died for my sins. I like my sins, though, and never asked anyone to die, so I assumed the Christ-on-a-cross position, stretching my arms straight out to my side, opening my mouth and tilting my head in mock agony.
Sometimes this strategy works, and it worked this morning. The preacher man slowed, then stopped, decided my soul wasn’t worth saving, and chased after someone else’s instead.
♦ ♦ ♦
Absolutely nothing interesting happened on the #560, riding to the diner. I paid my fare, took my seat, looked out the window, rang the bell, and stepped off at the diner.
♦ ♦ ♦
At Mrs Rigby’s, there’s a beggar who’s always on patrol in the parking lot, across the street, or around the corner but he’ll be back soon. It’s a quiet part of town, and he’s the neighborhood’s only regular homeless guy.
I’ve been making a small, cheap effort to help people who need help, so I’m usually kind with the homeless, and give what I can. I’ve always avoided saying anything or giving anything to that guy, though.
Spend enough time in cities, and you can tell by instinct which bums are scary and which aren’t, and the bum at Mrs Rigby’s is not scary, not at all, but — he’s the bum at Mrs Rigby’s, and I eat there two or three times a week. I don’t want a homeless guy expecting a handout, or worse, a conversation from me, every time.
Thus, I ignored him, as always, and felt kinda bad about it, as always… but never bad enough to talk to him, or give him any money.
♦ ♦ ♦
At the diner, a breakfast of minced ham and onion in scrambled eggs was glorious, with hash browns and french toast and too much coffee.
If you’re checking your file on me, no, that’s not my ordinary order. I’ve been switching things ’round, trying different things on the menu. Last week I had the shrimp and fried rice, which was marvelous. Breakfast this morning was marvelous, too, and then I walked past the diner’s bum on my way to the bus stop, ignoring him again.
♦ ♦ ♦
At the bus stop for part 1 of my 2-part my ride home, someone’s carry-out crumbs and plastic were on the bench, so I couldn’t sit. Good citizens tidy up a bus stop while they’re waiting, so I decided to attempt good citizenship.
This was new for me. I’ll always toss my trash in the bin, but never mess with someone else’s mess. Today, though, I picked up some stranger’s redded ketchup and yellowed mustard packets, and put them in the greasy plastic clamshell they’d left, even grabbed their burger wrapper off the pavement. I left the loose fries for the pigeons, or for the diner’s bum.
Carried the mess to the trash can, but it’s of a new design, sealed up tight on the top and bottom and on all sides, with only a small opening you’re supposed to drop your trash through. The opening is a few inches wider than my fist, but not nearly wide enough for the plate-size plastic clamshell carry-out container I was holding.
Ah, that’s why someone else’s mess had been left on the bench. More hostile architecture, like benches with bars in the middle, to make sure a homeless person never takes a nap, or more often, a lack of benches altogether, to make sure a homeless person doesn’t sit. Some idiot who’s paid to make such decisions has decided that the only openings to a trash can should be five inches side-to-side, though I can’t guess at why.
Crumpling the carry-out might’ve gotten grease and ketchup all over me, so I stashed the trash I’d collected atop the trash can, and sat on the bench I’d tidied. By the time my bus came mere minutes later, the garbage had blown off the top of the trash can and into the intersection.
♦ ♦ ♦
Riding back to the transit center, two pretty young women got onto the bus at the next stop, and sat in the seat directly in front of me, and I noticed.
I noticed so much that it took a few blocks before I noticed that a man across the aisle had his hand in his pants, and his pants were unzipped. Whether the women noticed, I’m not sure, but they kept talking as if they hadn’t.
You could tell from his matted hair and ragged apparel, he was homeless and/or not altogether together in his head. He was groaning softly, which made me momentarily fear the obvious, but the evidence suggested it was pain, not arousal.
First clue, he wasn’t looking at the women. Never gave them even a glance.
Second clue, his hand was down his pants, yeah, but nothing was exposed and his hand wasn’t moving. Most of the fun is in the moving, you know.
Third clue, the sound of his soft groans changed when he shifted how he was sitting.
It’s a bus ride so I’d tend to assume the worst, but my judgment call is that he had a pulled groin muscle or some similar medical condition, and he wasn’t perving on the ladies at all.
♦ ♦ ♦
At the transfer station again, I walked over to check the schedule. My bus only runs twice an hour, and the next #99 was in 29 minutes, so I sighed and leaned on a post, and looked all around the transit center. Nothing much else to look at, at a transit center.
The preacher was still there, preaching at someone else. Perhaps fifty people were waiting for their buses, but the stops are spread out, so they were small clumps of people, not a crowd. Half a dozen of them looked homeless or nearly, and across a wide bus driveway, another bum caught my attention. Demanded my attention, really.
He was talking to himself, but it was angry talking, and loud enough that everyone could hear. He ran his shopping cart loudly into a dumpster, then took something from the cart and disgustedly threw it onto the sidewalk. Then he banged his fist against the dumpster, so hard and so many times it had to hurt.
Again I looked at the people around me. Most were ignoring him, which is what people do. Ordinary behavior, around the abnormal.
A man near me was complaining that the bum should be arrested, and I do understand people’s fear of an angry muttering man. I share the fear, and if he’d crossed the asphalt toward where we riders were waiting, I would’ve joined one of the several clumps of people. Safety in clumps, and all that.
As I watched from a distance, across the busway, the bum paused his rant and began shaking instead, shivering, doing a dance of either withdrawal or a high I’ve never known and wouldn’t want. On a stage in a comedy club it would’ve been funny, but on a sidewalk beside a dumpster it wasn’t.
Then his shakes stopped, and his ranting resumed.
The man near me was watching all this, still complaining, telling everyone that he’s tired of seeing bums everywhere in the city. “There ought to be a law,” he said, “and there is a law, and it ought to be enforced.”
Do you want to call the cops, though, to have homeless people arrested and jailed? I don’t. That bum was loud and sorta scary, but he was harming no-one, threatening no-one. If the cops were called, and if they actually came, they could easily make the situation worse. That’s what cops do.
And you know, the angry rants of that bum were only a smidgen less coherent than the angry rants of the man complaining about the bum. About as loud, too.
We’re all sick of seeing bums everywhere, but arresting them is the very least helpful thing to do. There are so many things to try first, things never or barely tried, like giving a damn. Like, helping people who need help. Feeding the hungry, three meals a day. Sheltering the homeless, someplace where they’re safe and welcome. A ‘case worker’ perhaps, but not a case worker so overworked and overwhelmed that everyone he or she sees is a ‘case’ instead of a person.
If options like that were available, it would be rare to see a bum pounding on a dumpster and complaining to the wind. Since no options exist, mental illness on the street is not rare at all.
♦ ♦ ♦
On my #99 ride back home, nothing much happened. Which is what usually happens on the buses — nothing much.
9/27/2022
Republished 12/25/2025
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