At 60 plus years old, the romance of Simon and Garfunkel’s America is rooted in my childhood. A classic song about someone named Kathy and how she and her boyfriend rode a Greyhound as we “all come to look for America.”
Almost 50 years later I board my virginal long-haul bus from Durham, NC to New York City. It’s June of 2018 and I needed to get up there “on-the-cheap“ to see my son, Sam, in his first Off Broadway gig.
Earlier in the week, I am told by friends about the Megabus. I am told that there will be a lot of students from Duke on the bus making their way north with stops in Richmond, Washington, Baltimore. I go to their website which convey super clean buses, WIFI, electrical outlets and everyone is smiling. It’s cheap and I am impulsive and I buy my round-trip ticket, on-the-spot.
But later, other friends warn me that, since I am taking an all-night ride, there will be bugs crawling around inside the bus and a rough, rowdy crowd.
And, they send me reassuring pictures like this:
YIKES!
It’s a June night and Megabus is scheduled to leave at 8:10 p.m. and they mean it. Because of the way I get distracted, I was so late and I bolted out of my car to the bus terminal and forgot my suitcase. Also, note that many of these Megabuses load/unload on the street and not actually in a bus terminal. In my case, a Durham Depot terminal worker told me to “just go up that grassy hill and stand on the street.”
Sure enough I jogged to the top of the hill and there it was. A giant double-decker colorful bus with a clownlike face painted on the side. I climbed up the steps to the upper deck. It’s hot and the bus is packed and I take the last seat next to an older woman. Someone is yelling, “You can’t sit here!” a few rows in front.
Ah yes, this how it starts, right?
Apparently, someone was sitting in someone’s reserved seat and didn’t want to move—for $5 bucks more, you can reserve a seat which I believe can save you from waiting an hour in line.
The driver is a large, gravelly-voiced man– picture Samuel L. Jackson in a Megabus uniform. He calms everything down, the bus pulls out and I now notice that a large empty white trash bag is tied to the seat right in front of me, swirling in the aisle and across my feet. Through the night, this becomes an engorged, white condom of garbage as everyone on the top deck fills it with trash, half-filled coffee cups and whatever.
Here’s a copy of a late night text I wrote to my wife about that:
“Damn, the trash bag next to my seat broke and there Is gross wet stuff leaking out all over the floor under our seats. The bottom of my pack is soaked and my shoes stick to the floor.”
But here’s a thing. We’re all sort of laughing about this. Some are here because it’s a cheaper choice than train or plane. And, some because it’s the only way they can afford to get around. But, we’re all here riding north on I-95, in the dark, on this through-the-night bus.
I ignore my days-worth of IPod music and the books in my daypack, because my new Megabus neighbors are chatty and I am always up for a good story because everyone has one.
My seatmate says she is from Puerto Rico and departed right after Hurricane Maria wiped out her place a few months earlier in September, 2017. She shows me before and after pictures on her phone and news reports just announced the death toll has been updated to close to 2,000 after initially reported at fewer than 20.
She says that she and her two kids came to America with just what they could carry on the plane, no job, knowing no one and ended up in Fayetteville because she heard it was a nice place.
She happened to miss this comment:
She said coming over to America at first was hard, and pretty much homeless. Then, after several part-time jobs, she got a job working for Hilton Hotels as a housekeeper. She saved her money, and now is in a cheap apartment earning her way up. She also wants to get a job where she can be a translator and knows sign language, too, because she has a deaf niece.
Among many things, I also learn from her that tips mean a lot to housekeepers. I resolve that I will always leave at least $5 a night—more if my wife and three kids are with me because we can make one night in our hotel room look like we have lived there for a month.
It’s midnight and dark and I can see some clouds and bright stars through the sweeping skylight that stretches almost the entire length of Megabus. It’s very peaceful and pretty outside. But, inside, there is a constant low level of strange things happening.
Every once in there is a major stink and the women around me cover their mouths and noses with their sweaters. In the dark, a man is laughing and gagging at the same time. He says we are right above the bathrooms and it really seems that the exhaust fan blows, not outside, but spews directly into our second floor.
On time, we ease into Union Station in Washington D.C. at 1:30 a.m. to board another Megabus to NYC at 3 a.m. People are tired but help each other lift bags for older women and families with kids. Trying to be a good guy, I gallantly offer to help a skinny older lady with her carry on. This thing was so heavy! But you know how it is when you’re just trying to be cool as if it’s nothing but your eyes are bugging out of your face like a lemur!
We’re all off Megabus. It’s hot outside and the air has that sour subway smell–tobacco, urine, garbage.
The first half is done and I am sticky from whatever was oozing out of the garbage bag, and smell a bit like bathroom exhaust. Yet, I feel weirdly good. I liked how people who just happened to be next to each other because there was nowhere else to sit quietly talked in the night and I saw plenty of help extended in small yet meaningful ways.
I have already had some great conversations and learned good things from people I will probably never see again.
In a simple way, I feel like I am finding and living America.
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A Father Looks Past Sixty 