I got to the stop early and sat down on a bench at the 9th
& Peach stop. My phone’s battery is all but dead so I figure I’ll ask the
only other person at the stop.
He is a neatly dressed guy about 60, sitting there looking at the sidewalk.
“Are you waiting for the Route 31?” I ask him.
“I’m not waiting for the bus,” he tells me, “I like to sit
here and observe people. Then he adds, “You know, they don’t usually say
hello.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“PEOPLE! Only one in ten say hello back.”
I notice he has a beer can pretty well wrapped in cloth. As
a young man walks by, he says hello, and then informs me, “They call him Butt Man.”
“Should I ask why?”
“Because he likes to go around picking up cigarette butts." he explains.
"Of course me, I just like to look at
butts.”
“I see.”
He notices me writing in a notebook and asks what I am
doing. I tell him I write to keep from being bored while waiting at the bus.
This changes the tone of the conversation, and he suddenly
becomes serious..
“You know I have a PhD,” he tells me. “I suppose you want to
know how a PhD got homeless,” he says.
“No, I wasn’t wondering that,” I told him. “Stuff happens.”
“Stupid,” he says. “I was stupid.”
And then he tells me his “stupid story.” It wasn’t really
stupid, but it was long and detailed and not any more interesting than anyone
else’s stupid story. Finally, mercifully, my bus arrived.
I saw him a few more times that summer. Same thing, sitting
at the 9th & Peach bus stop working on some beer and telling his story.
The last time involved pickles. He had found a huge unopened
jar of pickles and was offering people a pickle as they passed by. He offered
me one and I said No thanks, I’m good.
Schedule panels were removed at least a month ago, with no explanation.
This can be problematic for people whose phone battery has died or who
are unfamiliar with the system. It can hold up buses when riders stop a
driver and ask if they know when such and such a route is coming.
