Wednesday, July 29, 2009

What you end up figuring out


Most people will tell you that they are "better than average" drivers.

I used to share an occasional late night cup of coffee with an old timer named Sonny. He was a Greyhound man from the old days, back before the lockouts and strikes, back before the smart money boys had run Greyhound into the ground. He'd been driving since the fifties and he had settled into a routine, driving the over night bus, up the coast from San Francisco to Crescent City.

Sonny would stop off in Santa Rosa and come into the Orange Bridge driver's room for a cup of coffee and a five minute break. I would usually be there, writing an incident report or watching television before I went home.

"Hey Sonny. How're they treating you lately?"

"They're still fuckin' me, but I must be used to it."

Other than that, there wasn't much conversation. Sonny would stand there, drink his coffee and leave. One night, after the usual long silence, he said, "You know, I can remember a time when I thought I was good at this shit." Then he finished his coffee and left.

Electricity- Paul Birch (Buy)

5 comments:

@eloh said...

Hey, First the text, very neat story. I have that same "feeling" about dealing with life...I think I was once pretty good at it, I openly suck in my old age.

The picture. I love the old pictures you come up with. I can buy the gust of wind, maybe from a passing motor car blowing her dress up.....but those panties were rigged...she did that on purpose ...free fare comes to mind.

Anonymous said...

I think exactly the same way about my old age!

You have a fantastic journal and a great world view...it's a comfort to know that there are people like you out there somewhere! ( which is kinda an old fart thing to say...)

Check out more of Art Fraym's world view here....

http://www.lileks.com/institute/frahm/index.html


Big Ern xxxx

Melbourne Australia

Your driver said...

Big Ern, wow, thanks, what a great link.

As I get older, I find the scope and magnitude of my ignorance grows larger every day.

ib said...

Sonny seems to have had it down all right. Less is more.

Anonymous said...

The older I get, the more I realize I need to know stuff I didn't think about before. The stuff I forgot makes room for new input!

Roz

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