RIDING THE DOG
The Greyhound bus station in downtown Baton Rouge—capital of the state of Louisiana—needs some work— the restrooms remind me of family car trips to Rock City or Pensacola in the 60s and 70s when you had to stop at gas stations and use the toilets that the mechanics used. Nothing against the mechanics, but my mom and I dreaded those bathrooms—it seemed like they were never cleaned—grimed with car grease on every surface. They smelled bad. The industrial toilet paper holders at the bus station have lost their covers, so you have to hold your hand over the rolls to keep them from falling out. The toilet seats are wonky, the tile floor slicked with a sticky grey film. The one I used did flush—from the odor I’m guessing not all of them did; none of the soap dispensers work or they’re empty; as was the hand sanitizer thingy which has a thick brown residue under the spout that I could not identify.
The waiting room has an overwhelming odor of used fryer grease that originates in a small kitchen at the back of the gift shop/convenience store that sells snack food, drinks and a few Louisiana items like Zatarain’s spice mixture, Tabasco sauce, and key rings in the shape of the state. The young man at the cash register—I bought some peanuts—was sweet and talkative. He’d moved to the state recently from out of the country and was greeting each customer with a warm smile and friendly banter. Most people in line didn’t look at him, so I made conversation and he seemed to appreciate it.
Communication from the drivers, who are usually pretty friendly and helpful, was poor. They told us to get off the bus and wait, that we would be boarding the same bus again for Lafayette and Houston in 30 minutes. One of drivers stomped his foot and shooed us inside, like we were naughty puppies—we weren’t allowed to wait outside—so we had to go back into the greasy lobby.
A nice man who spoke no English asked me to help him figure out what to do. He tried to mime the questions: Do I get my luggage off the bus? Do I wait inside or outside? Do we get on a different bus or the same one? How long do we wait? Ashamed of my lack of Spanish, I called my daughter-in-law who is from Ecuador and had her talk to him.
While I was trying to set up the call, a woman came inside through the back door frantically calling for help. She was short and stout and wearing a gray housedress and slip-on bedroom slippers with fur at the toes. Her grey hair was done in tiny braids against her head, and she had a righteous, you know what I mean, expression.
“That mangy dog out there chased me ‘cross the street. You got to do something about that dog.” She started shuffling in front of the ticket counter to get their attention, panting and barking like a dog. “He got the mange. Bald spots all over his back. It looks like the rabies.” The people who worked there eyed each other to see who was going to do something. They acted like this happened every day. Finally, one of them sat her down and went out to look in the back, presumably for the misbehaving dog.
Meanwhile, our driver came inside and in a frustrated, school-teacher voice commanded us all to get our luggage off the bus, we had to change buses. My daughter-in-law had just finished telling my Latino friend that we were going to get back on the same bus, and now I had to figure out how to explain what was happening. I wasn’t really sure myself since the information was vague. Google translate is not as easy to use as I thought, and no one in the room spoke Spanish. After a few tries, he and I figured it out, laughing together at the dog-lady.
The busload of passengers was crammed into the small lobby, and people were a little miffed. The group was a good representation of the American melting pot. We were black, white, brown—more than one Asian and Latino group were represented—all ages from teen to elderly. Some people wore vacation-type clothes, others appeared to be backpacking, and others looked like they’d just gotten off a construction site. Some were tattooed, pierced and braided, some old and square like me. I would guess there was no one in there you could call wealthy, but you never know. People were feeling put out partly because there was no explanation or apology for the inconvenience, and they had treated us like little kids in detention.
But after a while, the complaints turned into story swapping, comparing different bus stations—how when you leave the station in New Orleans, you have to be careful not to end up on the wrong street at the wrong time; how in Atlanta they warn you not to go outside the doors unless you want to be mugged; somebody started teasing that he heard we’d have to go all the way back to New Orleans to get another bus headed towards Houston. Before long everybody was talking and laughing and teasing each other. Even the non-English speakers looked like they picked up on the lift in the room.
Our bus came and we boarded, the laughing and teasing kept on. The dog-lady climbed on and announced—punctuated with much laughter: “It’s me. I’m on the bus. My name is, what y’all want my name to be today? Y’all can call me whatever you want. That young boy at the cash register, he said, where you going? I said I’m going to your house.” She laughed. “I told him I was going to his house. It’s not his business where I’m going.” (The nice kid at the cash register, trying to make conversation.)
She yelled up to the driver, “What’s your name, honey? You married? He say he’s got four wives. How many kids you got with four wives? Hunh, imagine, four wives.”
I’ll admit that I got emotional about the whole experience, probably inflating it, but it renewed my hope for the country, for humanity in general, for the possibility that love, and compassion, and humor will in the end lift us back into neighborliness and good-will, and that in the next dire situation we find ourselves, a mad virus or civil strife, we will rise to the occasion, like this group did in the greasy Greyhound bus station in Baton Rouge.