Every now and then a bus ride may take an unexpected turn. Or perhaps all bus rides do. Sometimes there’s a conversational hum. You think the bus is full of chattering friends, look around, and everyone’s sitting alone, cell phones pressed to ears.

Sometimes people are actually talking, over the sounds of the street, to visible companions. Strangers meet, discover they’ve both spent time in jail, and a long and fascinating discussion ensues. Too bad I didn’t take notes.

Then there’s the incident I witnessed last week. A large black woman in a wheel chair rolled onto the bus, which meant that a pudgy man, grey beard and baseball cap, had to move out of the handicapped section. Nothing unusual. If you sit at the front of the bus, you have to be ready to give up your seat.

When we got to Wisconsin Avenue, the woman rolled her chair towards the door, and the man popped back instantaneously into his original seat, right opposite me. He muttered something I missed, made a gesture I didn’t see, and the woman lost her cool, really lost it. She suddenly backed her chair to where it had been, and screamed and swore at the man. He had a nasty reply for everything she aimed at him, replies I’d never quote in a blog. Finally she howled, “I’m gonna slap you across the face!”
“You do that, and I’ll press charges.”

What had I missed, what had he said and done?
“Tell that man there what you did,” and she pointed to another onlooker. “Would you do that to your mother? You can’t treat me like that, this isn’t 1864. I’m not a slave, I’m a person, I’m a human being!”

Some of the other passengers snickered; I felt like crying.

“I’m not getting off, I’m staying right here.” Ah hah, then the man would have to change his seat again.

The volley continued, hatred batted back and forth, as I sat unobserved inches from the fray. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you don’t even need that wheelchair.”
“You don’t know what I have, you m... f....!”
 The bus driver got up and left, and returned a few minutes later with a transit official.

“This man has problems,” said the onlooker, who seemed to be a regular rider. After a short discussion, the official escorted the beard-belly-baseball cap off the bus. The bus driver wanted to help the woman in the wheelchair off.
“I’m not getting off here and have that guy harass me!”
“Don’t worry, he’s not coming near you,” and she finally got off at her stop.

“So is the show over?” asked a passenger.
It wasn’t over for the actors in the show, and it wasn’t over for me.
 

Friday morning, snow deep, plowing just begun, Adolph and I are on the number 15, headed to the south side to see our chiropractor. Though I figured the bus would be late, we slogged to the stop in front of Pick ‘N Save early. Good move, the bus arrived on the dot. The driver tooted when he saw everyone waiting. “The bus is here!” he exclaimed as we boarded. “Amazing,” I said, “So long as you’re taking us to Oklahoma and Kinnickinnic.” He helped me slide a crumpled dollar bill into the machine, cheerily greeted everyone who got on, “Be careful, take your time.” He sets the tone, a bright bus bubble floating through Shorewood.

We’re passing Harry’s Bar and Grill now, where the Oakland Café once was. For years at 6:15 A.M. I’d swim forty lengths at the Shorewood Pool, bike to the Oakland on my single speed, coast past drivers digging their cars out of snow drifts on days like today, then nurse my coffee, nibble a bran muffin, and write or draw.

The bus TV cuts into my memories, “If you’ve been exposed to toxic chemicals at work or in your home and now have acute myeloid leukemia, call...” “Lawn pesticides,” I say to Adolph, “double your chance of getting leukemia, but at least you won’t have dandelions.” Maybe I’m wrong, I think it’s worse. I’ve read that kids are about seven times more likely to get childhood leukemia if their parents use lawn chemicals.

Here’s Park Place, the stop for the Urban Ecology Center, North Avenue, for Beans and Barley or the Oriental Theater, coming to Brady Street, now Water Street and Danceworks, we saw a great performance there on Sunday, the Marcus Center, we heard Mozart’s clarinet concerto there last Friday, Mason Street, we got off there earlier this month to see the Bellows show at the Art Museum.

“You know, one of these days I think I’ll take this bus all the way to the end,” a man is saying to the bus driver.
“You’ll kill an hour,” the driver replies.
“But there’s a whole ‘nother city.”
“I’ll save you a seat.”

Wisconsin Avenue, and the driver says goodbye to every departing passenger, “Have a nice one,” “Have a good day,” “Have a good weekend,” “See you at the sled hill.” A new passel of passengers boards. A small woman with cell phone, walkman, and a case full of CD’s, sits next to me, peers at my writing, and asks, “Shorthand?” “Yes,” I reply, my own invented shorthand, my own symbols. Now she’s on her cell phone, speaking the fastest Italian I‘ve ever heard, I can’t understand a word she’s saying, so why am I sure it’s Italian? Uh oh, someone went past his stop, has to walk back a few blocks.

As we pass Next Act Theater, the driver  turns to me, “Where did you say you want to get off?”
“Oklahoma,” I tell him, that whole ‘nother city.
 

Adolph and I spent five days in Oshkosh last week, setting up an exhibit at UW-Oshkosh and giving talks and critiques. Adolph traveled there with a truckload of our artwork. Since I would have had to sit on the floor in the truck’s cab and look up only at sky and treetops for an hour and a half, I chose to take a bus.

I walked into Milwaukee’s new Amtrak Station almost two hours early for the bus to Oshkosh, and my nostrils curdled. The station isn’t new at all, it’s on its way to being new. Bus and train passengers have to wait in a construction site, overwhelmed by fumes. I went outside to breathe; the air was saturated with cigarette smoke.

This is nothing compared to what the people in southern California are inhaling, I kept telling myself. But then, we don’t have forest fires here. I’m sure an airport wouldn’t remain open to the public if its air were this toxic. Perhaps this is a class issue.

I asked a bus driver what the fumes were. “Glue,” he told me, “That’s why I’m out here.” He paused, then added, glancing at the solid glass walls, “The winds will blow right through there in winter. And it’ll cost a fortune to heat. They had the architects design it, didn’t want any input from the people like me, the people who use it every day.”

Another class issue, I thought. Bus riders, whether local or long distance, don’t count. Here we are, some voluntarily, some not, taking public transportation. We help in the fight against global warming, and Scott Walker wants to cut back local bus routes. He tried to get rid of the #15 of all routes, the East Side lifeline for those who don’t drive, the miracle bus that takes us from Bayshore to Bayview and beyond, never empty, never dull! Rather than Scott Walker, I’d dub him Scott Driver.