Bus Kid

My folks dropped me off at the bus station at a quarter to four. It was almost Christmas.
The thing I remember was the smell.

When I was a kid, my family went all over the place, not even three years before, we went to Mexico.
Mexico, where the smell of humanity coalesced into something that I didn’t at first dig, being I was a kid from Iowa small town. Where even the smells from the packing plants were far away. The grass was indeed sweet and summers had a timeless over bright green blue, as if those pictures you see now, from the era, were true depictions of life. It’s hard to differentiate these pictures from my true memories…especially if they were good…

So Mexico, pollution, people, food, sewage, trash, shit, flowers, sweat and dirt was the palate of this din of scent. Somehow though, as I look back…and even now, witness these smells from time to time, I think back and realize that it wasn’t all bad. Even though you knew part of it was the decay of our humanity.
I forgot to mention…the smell of death was there too.

So getting to the bus station in the then foreign downtown was no closer to adventure than a dog getting a free ride to the vet.

A most of it was due to the smell. B, I was going to my grandparents, who would have again, nothing for me to do and c. I turned around, looking for my parents… and felt like an adult for the first time. I can’t remember exactly if my folks were together or not then.

You know, it’s odd. I can define my childhood and youth through other people’s eyes, but to look back and make sense of the actions I took in direct response to the actions of others…I guess, I’m a little fuzzy.

But there I was. The Kansas City Greyhound station. A dark place. Dark tile floors, less than antiseptic. Fiberglass chairs, you know, the kind that are formed to look like they’re comfortable and then when you sit down, you realize that the joke is that the floor, the cold, especially dirty floor of the bus station, was more comfortable. And yet, to sit on the floor was to admit some National defeat, as if we were too civilized to park it on the floor like people in so many other populations…including México.

Cruel humor. TV’s at the bus station. Connected to the same pastel plastic ejector seats; like the joke of my Grandpa and Grandma bringing sugar free candy for Easter, like the joke of moving to the suburbs. Into a house with a pool, moving into a house with a pool in the suburbs in August. Until you find that your chores are to mix the nuclear compounds together to make that pool clean and fresh, and to vacuum that very same pool. The slow death of a ten year old. To make sure the giant crystal diamond, the toy of all toys, the culmination of all of your childhood dreams was to make sure you moved the aluminum pole slow enough so that the sand and dirt in the bottom was able to be sucked by the not powerful enough vacuum.

My dad always thought I was doing a half-assed job. But he didn’t realize the anguish of cleaning that thing…took hours. The joke of finding you old blind dog dead floating in the pool and the stench of the foul thing entering into my coke after we cleaned up from the burial. The smell of death pervades everything it touches.

Incidentally, about the dog. I’d found her time and again in that pool swimming for dear life. And I generally did not want her to fall in and took some precautions, like putting towels out around the pool, to act as a tactile reminder to the poor thing that she was getting close. For my part, I was too confident in my invention and stayed away too long. It didn’t take long. Really only fifteen minutes and she was gone. But can you imagine, this yellow death funk, glomming onto everything in that short of time. ..Especially my coca-cola.

The TV’s, these black pods bolted to the ends of the fiberglass ejector seat rows, were all the rage at the time. Some were bashed, magic markered and basically vandalized. But I tell you, they deserved it. Let me tell you, and I know bus stations haven’t really changed over the decades. Mostly, poor people go there. Maybe some bussers have money, but I’ll wager you, they are either seriously penny pinchers, or are out for an adventure… hah. But those four people are the minority and the underdog.

These black boxes they called TV’s were black and white mini TV’s that at one time, like simple function calculators with LCD screens, cost hundreds of dollars. So I, at the time, stuck there at the bus station, and being somewhat addicted to TV, was thinking, ah, sweet freedom.

We put our quarters in the slot, and turn the knob. Slowly the screen comes to life. A dot appears. After an eon, the dot turns into this hazy snow and static swells like a slow motion wave. Before you know it a double vision image of some rerun comes on. There’s no antennae, so reception is as-is.

Here’s how the bus station is. Of course sooner than later, the timer shuts off the tv and you think that purgatory is no worse because… well you never have enough coin to turn the thing back on…even though you’d rather just draw on the thing, or break it, out of contempt for those who thought it would be a good idea to bolt the little black licorice boxes onto the pastel death chairs. The Bus Station – Good and Plenty… Witnesseth your addiction and be tormented by it.

It was just at the time, I felt vulnerable.

I swore up and down to my folks that I was ready for it. And I was, if everything had worked out perfectly.