CTA Stories

The writing on the boxes: "Soul Unpriced" and "Priced Soul." Who knew that Mephistopheles used the Damen bus?

It took me a minute or two to figure out that they were vinyl records, not spirits of the eternally damned.

Overheard: TMI

Cell phone convo, bench in Jackson station of the Blue Line:

"Sheila? Yeah...I'm on my way to Momma's. I got to tell her something bad. Yeah, something bad happened. I THINK I GOT HERPES! HER-PES. It had to be Corey. [long pause] I don't know for sure...but girl, it LOOKS like herpes."

CTA Stories: So Close

I got on a mid-day Red Line train, and took the nearest available seat, one of the side-ways ones next to the door. My companion in the next seat was a 40-ish east Asian man. I could feel his eyes boring into me. "Haiiii," he said loudly. "Hi," I replied and started digging around in my bag for a power bar. He intently watched as I unwrapped the bar and took a bite. "A snneck...snack?" he asked. I nodded and kept on chewing. "What is...the writing?" and he reached for the wrapper in my left hand. He read it out loud "Soooy Joy. Soy Joy." I offered him my second bar, which he declined. "Thought it was CHOEcolate."

We pulled into the Monroe station, and a young couple and a girl in a short, baby-doll dress got on. The latter, who had most of her long tanned legs exposed, stood directly across from us. My friend looked her up and down. His gaze was without any heat. It seemed more like that of scientist who had just encountered a new species. Glued to her iPhone, the girl never appeared to notice him. She got off a couple of stops later.

Just across from us, the young couple were canoodling. The boy was tall and whippet-thin, and wore a chain as thick as my little finger. On it dangled a sparkly egg-sized pendant, meant to represent a money bag. While he giggled and exchanged meaningful looks with his sweetie, he toyed with her hoop earring. They drew ever nearer, until body contact was absolute.

"So CLOSE!" my friend exclaimed, pointing at them. "You never see in a Adjun (Asian) country!" "Well, they're in love," I explained. A man seated near us began to laugh. The boy and girl, looking a little embarrassed, scampered back into the hobo corner at the end of the car. As I found out later, my fellow passenger was visiting from Korea. We chatted briefly about Korean television--last year, I developed an addiction to Dae Jang Geum--and then it was time for me to leave. He said goodbye with an air of distraction, already looking around for another example of bizarre Chicago behavior.

CTA Stories: Dear Olympic Selection Committee

Yet another video of a completely out-of-control Chicago police officer giving somebody a beatdown. This one took place on my favorite CTA story bus, the #70 Division. There are a lot of good cops out there, but this city needs to do something about the bad apples before we even consider hosting an event like the Olympics.

CTA stories: Five-finger discount

This morning, I managed to hook the power cord of my laptop with my foot and drag it to the floor. The impact did a lot of damage; wires protruded from the back hinge, and the prong on the power cord was split. The girl at the Apple store didn't think it was worth saving. "It'll probably cost at least $750.00 to get it repaired. I mean, if it were me, I'd just get a new one." So, I did. "Seth," who looked too young to have a business card, will transfer the files from my trashed laptop. I had to stop at work to read my email and do this post. So, no music this Sunday. I will do whatever people used to do before there was an internet. I had this partially finished CTA story sitting around, so here ya go.

Although they only have engineers now, until mid-1990s every CTA train also carried a conductor. Conductors announced stops and delays, operated doors and were responsible for passenger safety. When I first moved to Chicago, a number of lurid crimes occurred on public transportation. The rape in broad daylight on a Loop platform. The stickup man on the afternoon west-bound who killed an Oak Park father of two. The young artist slashed across the throat with a razor. If I was traveling alone, I always got on the car with the conductor. It's safer to ride now, but I miss having conductors.

One of the Ravenswood line conductors livened his announcements with a little stage patter. I paraphrase: "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Love Train. We are currently cruising at an altitude of 30 feet and at speeds between 15 and 25 miles per hour. Please relax and let us do the driving; however, do keep an eye on your purses and wallets, to prevent practitioners of the five-finger discount."

Pick-pocketing was common in the 80s, as was the related crime of chain snatching. Some of the older trains with no air-conditioning were still in commission. A mark wearing a gold chain would be sitting next to one of the open windows. The perp got off at the next stop, reached in and BAM! ripped the chain off and ran. It was nearly impossible for the victim to fight his way off the train and catch up.

I was picked once, when a man carrying what looked like his dry cleaning used it as a cover to unzip my backpack and remove a coin purse. I lost five dollars in tokens, a cheap lesson. A number of people on the platform saw it, but nobody confronted him. That was smart. Remember the young artist I mentioned earlier? He tried to stop a pickpocket from taking a another passenger's wallet. They could get aggressive if cornered.

One evening, a friend-I'll call him Danny-and I were waiting to get on the subway. Trains were delayed, and the platform was crowded. "Let 'em off first! Let 'em off," the conductor announced as everyone pushed toward the doors. One man held up the rest of us, shouting that his foot was trapped between the platform and the door. That was entirely believable, if you just fell off the turnip truck. The foot in the door bit was a distraction so his colleagues could get to work. A woman in front of us wore tight jeans, her wallet bulging out of the back pocket. A big guy in a trench coat sidled up, and delicately started to slide it out. Danny (who later said he had no idea why he did something this dumb) put his hand on the guy's arm. "Don't do it." The pickpocket looked amused. He put his arm around Danny's shoulder and said, in nearly a whisper, "If you do that again my friend, I'm gonna knock you out." He released Danny, and all three of us boarded the train. Terrified, we walked through several cars to get to the conductor. "Did them pickpockets get you?" she asked, shaking her head. Danny didn't want to file a police report; he figured the cops would just laugh at him, and he was probably right.

CTA stories: Just some stuff

An acquaintance recently asked if I had any new CTA stories. I wish. Riding on the train in the 2000s is just another quotidian event. The Blue Line is packed like a cattle car, and my fellow commuters are mostly dull young professionals. I can tick off the mildly interesting experiences of the last year on one hand and still have some fingers left over.

On a steaming hot Saturday afternoon, I am trapped on a train stalled between Division and Damen. The air conditioning is out. Across the aisle from me are two Hasidic men wearing hats and heavy wool coats. They have luggage with them, and are probably riding all the way to O'Hare. Watching them melt distracts me from my own misery. There are tiny drops of moisture gathering on their beards. Finally, one of them asks, with a surprising Yiddish accent "So, are trains in Chicago usually not air-conditioned?"



I walk into the Logan Square station to commute to work. The ticket agent is standing in the middle of the entry, shouting "No Trains Today!" over and over. Why? I ask. She shrugs and continues her message loop. I go above ground and cross the street to wait for the Milwaukee bus with...oh about 50 other people. One man says that he heard that there's been a fire in the tunnel. (As we later discover, a train derailed and a major evacuation fiasco ensued. On the Chicago Tribune website I see a photo of my friend Annie clambering out of some grungy Capone-era emergency hatch.)

A Milwaukee bus arrives, subtly rocking back and forth with the enormous weight of too many people. For some insane reason, I fight my way on. At each stop, more people irrationally squeeze on to the bus. I can't breath. Someone's armpit is close to knocking my glasses off. I realize that I am going to throw up/faint/scream. I begin the lengthy process of fighting my way off the bus. My fellow commuters are not going down easy. Usually, people step off to allow others to leave. Riders on the Bus of the Damned are glassy-eyed, refusing to budge. "Let me out!" I shout. "I'm gonna be sick!" I am nearly ejected on to the sidewalk.



On the evening of November 4, I enter the subway station, on my way to watch the election results at a friend's house. Four men are clustered together talking excitedly: two Puerto Rican guys wearing athletic jerseys with enormous portraits of Obama printed on the front and lots of bling, an older white guy with a ponytail (they don't call it the People's Republic of Logan Square for nothing), and a young white hipster. The boys are all pumped about Obama's chances. The hipster and I discuss Nate Silver's very encouraging electoral projections on FiveThirtyEight.com. He tells me, "He (Silver) lives right here in Chicago, in Wicker Park." We both marvel at being in Chicago right now, witnesses to History. When I get off at my stop, the guys wave and wish me a good night.



That's all the recent news from Chicago, the Mild, Mild West. Next time I promise to go back 15 years or so.

Overheard

Man on the train, talking on his cell:

"So, the woman who was interviewing me asked me what my favorite movie was. I wasn't thinking and said 'Requiem For A Dream.' She said, 'Oh, what's that about?' I said 'heroin addiction.' And then I pretty much knew I wasn't going to get the job."

CTA stories: Throwdowns

For my first year in Chicago, my co-worker Darryl was in charge of getting my urban slang vocabulary up to speed. Not that he wanted the job, but as the only black employee at our advertising art studio, he was often forced into the role. There were some small rewards, like the time he laughed until he wept after I told him I thought "bootie" was another term for "foot." Yes, I thought that when KC and the Sunshine Band sang "shake your bootie, it's your duty," they were just doing a disco version of the Hokey-Pokey. In addition to getting the body parts vocab straightened out, Darryl introduced me to the term "throwdown," or, fight. Like most African American slang, the term has been appropriated by white youth culture, and now also means moshing/slam dancing. But in 1985, it meant a good old knock-down-drag-out.

I haven't seen a throwdown on CTA in more than a decade. Especially on the gentrified north side, the chance of seeing an all-out slugfest on a bus or train have dwindled to almost nothing. The last two I witnessed occurred fairly close to each other in early 90's: an all-girl melee on the North Avenue bus which left the floor littered with torn homework and hair extensions, and the Brown Line meat fight.

The latter happened on a warm day, as the southbound Ravenswood/Brown Line train made it's way out of the Armitage station. I was sitting in one of those sideways-facing seats near rear, headphones in, lost in my music. Suddenly, everyone else started bustling through the emergency exit door to the following car. I glanced to the front of the car, expecting to see a bumblebee, or even someone vomiting...you know, ordinary train-clearing stuff. Instead, there were two men punching and kicking the hell out of each other. I joined the line exiting the car.

By the time we pulled into the Sedgwick stop, we were all cowering in the other car while the fight continued. After a minute or two, one of the combatants pulled the emergency lever and forced the doors of his car open. He ran down the platform and toward the stairs, taking a sudden detour as a police officer bounded up and pursued him. The second guy, who had an anachronistic porn mustache, followed. A few moments later, he returned, looking wild-eyed. He stood outside our car, talking to a second cop. His neck was covered with bloody scratches, and in one hand, he held a raw steak. I'm not sure what cut, but it was a large one, maybe a Porterhouse.

After about a fifteen minute delay, the train continued on. We passed the first man, now face down on the platform and cuffed, surrounded by police. The role the steak played in the conflict is unclear.


photo by sparktography

CTA Stories: The Old Man of Diversey

He is perhaps three score and ten, and perpetually grizzled, as if he saw a razor last week at the most recent. He wears a Masonic diamond pinky ring, but his clothing is stained and free of a woman's care. He is tall, and I think at one time, was a strapping, handsome man. His most salient feature is the monologue. Every time I've shared a ride with him, he talks incessantly, the driver being the most obvious captive audience. The last time I saw him was when I was traveling west from the Brown Line. He sat in the seat directly behind the driver, and I wondered how she could concentrate as he jabbered away.

On Wednesday, I rode the bus east, and The Old Man was there. Our driver was a regular on the route, an African American man with striking green eyes. He always wishes riders a good day as they leave the bus, his sea-colored gaze resting upon us. That morning, I pretended to read The New Yorker while sitting adjacent to the Old Man. A school crossing guard was facing him. She was a large woman, wearing a police-style cap and a coat decorated with two wide reflector stripes. The Old Man directed most of his monologue at her, which she accepted with judge-like impartiality.

She could be a stickler. Her house was a showcase. A showcase! Everything had to be immaculate. You could eat off of the floor. Us kids could not play in certain rooms. My father's sister-in-law, Dorothy. A person like that can be very difficult to live with. Everything had its place. My pop was straight with ma.."I'm not going to live in no showcase!" But, she could be a lot of fun. Yes, when she wasn't in her own house, she was the life of the party! A damn good cook, too. A very good-looking woman and always dressed to the nines. Her daughters got out of there as soon as possible. One of them told me, "I didn't grow up in a house. I grew up in a showcase!" [to bus driver] GOOD DRIVING JOCK! Well, nobody's perfect. She was a fine woman. They're all gone now. I'm the only one left.

The analysis of Dorothy's character continued for 20 blocks. I once read that in Mexico, there are "the dead," and "the truly dead." Those who are "truly dead," are forgotten. Their graves are untended and no living person remembers them. That morning, I could see Dorothy, her bright lipstick and neat dresses, her laughter, and the little house that was her shrine.

CTA Stories: M.I.L.K.

On occasion, instead of taking the Blue Line for my morning commute, I ride the Diversey bus east. The demographics of the bus change as we venture closer to the lake. First the Polish domestics, most of them women, easily identifiable due to fondness for animal skin prints and improbable hair color. Then, Hispanic moms escorting children to school and daycare. My section of Avondale is Mexican/Guatemalan/Salvadorian, with a smattering of Puerto Rican and Euro-everything. Around Wolcott, real estate signs start to tout "Luxury two-bedroom units starting at 300." Thousand, that is. We have entered yuppie territory, and white guys with briefcases and Blackberries join the mix.

However, just before the bus enters that realm of overpriced real estate, it passes through one of the city's oldest housing projects, Lathrop Homes. One winter morning, the bus pulled over to pick up passengers at the stop just north of the Chicago river. BAM! Something hit one of the windows, hard, and the bus rocked with the impact. Several people screamed. I whipped around to look in the direction of the sound. A passenger, one of the Polish women, was crouching on the floor. The window next to where she had been seated was coated with a white fluid. BAM! Another one hit a window two seats down. This time, I saw it--a carton of milk. A boy of about fourteen or fifteen ran behind a tree for more ammo. He re-emerged holding a pint milk carton. It was double the size of cute little cartons I remember from grade school. The assault continued, despite the efforts of an elderly woman from the projects who screamed at the boy to stop. He had quite an arm, this kid...if he had aimed the milk at someone's head, he could have knocked them out cold.

His face lit with sadistic joy, he hurled another milk bomb at the bus. BAM! A carton hit the back door, and a spray of milk shot through the center crack. The driver scrambled to lock the front door, and then drove a couple of blocks ahead and pulled over. He radioed for police assistance. "A youth is throwing milk at the bus." Long pause. "Milk. M..I..L..K." I felt sorry for him. It was difficult to make a case that a milk attack required police intervention. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the cops showed up. By then, the perpetrator was long-gone, leaving dozens of late commuters and proverbial spilt milk in his wake.

Overheard (and seen)

Woman (after kissing man goodbye at the entrance to the Logan Square Blue Line station): "Have a good day, baby! See ya tonight, and I'll try to bring a blunt!"
Man: "Aaaright!"

I board the train, and sit next to a young man with a notebook. He divides the page into two columns, and pauses, looking thoughtful. He writes in each column. I try to tilt my head enough to catch the entries in my peripheral vision. One column is labeled Delights, the other is Distastes. I can't read the items under Distastes, but the two entries under Delights are "Milk" and "Lavender." To my disappointment, he gets off at Division.

CTA Stories: Green Limousine

I wanted to use this post to praise my favorite CTA bus drivers, and throw barbs at some others. Of all of the agency employees, I think the bus drivers have the most stressful jobs. The word "multi-tasking" doesn't even come close to what I've seen on the Diversey bus on a typical Saturday afternoon. In addition to answering directional questions, a driver is expected to make sure nobody sneaks on without paying, remember to stop when the cord is pulled, avoid hitting reckless cars, bicycles and jaywalkers, lower and raise a hydraulic lift and then get off and manually pull down a ramp for disabled riders, stay roughly on schedule, and often have his/her ear worn out by some chatterbox who sits up front. Difficult passengers, some of whom have subjected me to sights, sounds and smells I'd sooner forget, are there for the duration. When the man who clearly had gone to bathroom in his pants got on the North avenue bus, most of the passengers (self included) bailed out, choking and gagging. The driver didn't have that option. In that light, it is especially surprising at how many mensches one finds behind the wheel of the Green Limousine.

I have however, encountered a few crazies and garden-variety misanthropes wearing the CTA badge. Some of the more notable:

The young guy driving the Division bus who openly cursed other motorists and got on the PA system and shouted, and I quote, "Get your asses to the back of the bus!" I believe the CTA-favored phrase is "please move to the back of the bus in order to allow other passengers to board." As one of my fellow passengers said, as he was leaving at Clark and Division, "You are insane. I am reporting you."

Also driving a Division bus was an African American woman who launched into an obscenity-laced rant at another black woman with a West Indian accent. Her crime? Pausing too long at the door to give instructions to a man watching her dog. The driver said (cursing redacted) "You people think you're better than us and then come here to steal our jobs!" The passenger began to weep and said that she was going to visit her dying mother in Jamaica, and why was she being treated like this? (I tell you people, why are you still driving? Never a dull moment.) Several people on that bus also vowed to report the driver.

And then there's the sour prick who still works the Belmont route. Instead of doing something for which his personality is suited, like working at a remote fire watch station in the Rockies, he's right in the midst of what he loathes: people. Weirdly, he is also a ringer for actor Strother Martin, and even sounds like him, albeit with a Chicago accent. A few weeks ago, I picked up the west-bound bus at Southport. It was packed, and I backed off the steps to allow several people who had to struggle through the crowd get off belatedly. I paused for one second to see if there was anyone else. "Get on the bus!" he snarled. "I don't got all day!" What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Although most of the drivers are mute and innocuous, the mensches still outnumber the jerks. I already mentioned the driver who allowed two little girls to bring an entire Christmas tree on the bus. Another time, one looked the other way when a little boy got on with a puppy. Pets are supposed to be in carriers, but the child sat directly across from the driver with the sleeping puppy on his lap. He stroked its ears, his face suffused with a pure joy.

Another driver assisted a women in a wheelchair at the east-bound stop at Diversey and Sheffield. She seemed profoundly disabled, possibly with ALS, and even moving the controls on her electric wheelchair was a struggle. As is usual in that neighborhood, someone had parked an SUV at the bus stop, making it impossible for the driver to pull close to the curb. The driver lowered the ramp to street level, allowing a large gap between bus and the curb so that the passenger could maneuver to the corner and up the ramped part of the sidewalk. In her opinion, it wasn't a good solution, and she lit into him. She was pretty abusive, calling him "stupid," and saying he should have dropped her off at the corner. He didn't defend himself, but quietly said, "I do apologize, ma'am. I am sincerely sorry." She continued for a little while longer, and then directed her chair to the corner and deftly rolled up and on to the sidewalk. I was very impressed by this man's grace and composure, and told him so. He thanked me, and said "At the end of my shift, I can walk off of this bus. She probably will never walk again. Maybe I should have pulled up to the corner, I don't know. But I do know that my life can't be as difficult as hers."

Last, the literary bus driver. I was preparing to get off the Belmont bus, holding a paperback in my hand. Traffic was heavy, and we crept toward the stop. The driver noticed my book, and asked me what I was reading. Uh...Independent People. "Is it good?" I'm enjoying it, I said. "What's it about?" I struggled with myself for a brief moment. I looked at this man and saw someone who was blue collar, black and very heavy; he had been automatically filed in my brain under "Different," with a capital D. How would I describe to him a novel which, although historical, is about timeless themes like colonialism, patriarchy, the mystical bond between children and animals, and ultimately how the oppressed sometimes brutally oppress others? "It's about a sheep-herder and his family in turn-of-the century Iceland," I answered lamely. "It's really, really good. The author won the Nobel Prize for literature." He pulled the bus over to my stop. "Let me write down the title and the author." He was very enthusiastic about the novel, and made sure to spell Halldór Laxness correctly, even including the diacritic. "I always ask people about what they are reading. I've read some very good books I wouldn't know about otherwise." I asked him for some examples. He mentioned a few books, some of them more popular works, but one that struck me was Madame Bovary. I wished him happy reading, and continued home. I imagined him relaxing in a big chair, maybe a La-Z-Boy, reading the part in Independent People where, after his daughter's coffin has been tied to the back of a horse, an old man whispers an ancient incantation in each of the animal's ears. "You carry a coffin today. You carry a coffin today." The girl was his last child remaining in Iceland. The passage makes my heart ache, even now. In my mind's eye, the literary bus driver sighs, and puts the book down for a few moments, overcome with emotion.

Photo: Goatopolis

Roscoe Street

Is this a story about the CTA? Not really. It's not even a story, just some random memories about a place I lived, long ago. The apartment was on Roscoe near Greenview, and the Brown Line elevated train, then called the Ravenswood, was in my back yard. The year was 1986 or 1987. I don't remember exactly.

I was nearly broke, and moved in with my friend Brek in order to save money. He slept in the bedroom, and I was on the couch. We had two fans. Air conditioning was for other people. I remember an entire summer of sweating profusely on threadbare sheets, and waking every time the once-an-hour night train roared past our building. Even so, I slumbered through an audacious tag of our building: LATIN KINGS RULE, with a crown, all in two-foot tall spray-painted gothic lettering right under my open window.

The noise from the Ravenswood train constantly interrupted conversation. I had a friend who lived near the Paulina stop, and when we talked on the phone, he would say "wait a minute" while the train went past his place. A few minutes later, I would say "wait a minute," while it went past me. My roommate and I sat on the back porch with a six-pack of beer and waved at people riding the "El." Many of the older, un-air-conditioned trains with open windows were still in commission. Sometimes a passenger would shout at us. One time, somebody playfully tossed a tennis ball down at us.

The neighborhood, Roscoe Village, was mostly white and working class. An entire building just to the east seemed to house only hillbillies. Two men in the building sat at their third floor window and harassed me every time I walked by. They were always there, day or night. The bodega across the street had very recently been a tavern. Brek's former roommate yelled at a man who was making noise outside the bar after closing. The man finished off his bottle of Everclear, and threw it through the open window, where it shattered against the far wall. I was glad the tavern had lost its license before I moved there.

Mostly, it was a homey, friendly neighborhood. A pizzeria on Southport sold fresh cannoli. In warm weather, people sat on their porches and greeted us. One of our neighbors, a curmudgeonly old guy who always smoked a cigar as he walked his toy poodle Sally, stopped by to grouse about teenagers or our mail service.

Brek, a urban sophisticate compared to me, introduced me to, in no particular order: sushi, Kraftwerk, moshing, Jagermeister, William Burroughs, wearing black everything, Reynan's Bakery (now long gone), and city biking. I owe him a great debt, especially for the sushi intro. Alas, he got engaged and decided to move in with his fiance. I couldn't afford our squalid little slice of heaven on my own, so I left Roscoe Village for a shared apartment in Lakeview. Perhaps it was a special place and time, or maybe being young always makes it so. I don't think I've ever missed a neighborhood as much.

Photo: Joseph Palmer

Underground Music

My apologies for the lousy quality of this photo: after my experience at Pitchfork, it seems like I'm incapable of taking a good picture of a person playing a musical instrument. This lady has been rocking out the Jackson Blue Line stop on and off for a few weeks. Sometimes she has friends, sometimes she's solo. She's a talented blues guitarist and vocalist, so if you happen by, drop a couple bucks in her gig bag.

CTA Stories: Don't Do This, Please

Boingboing recently reported on findings by the University of London's Centre for Neuroimaging on how fear is processed in the brain. In the face of immediate danger, processing moves away from the pre-frontal cortex to a more primitive part of the brain, one which controls quick-response survival mechanisms. That may explain why, a couple of New Years ago, I picked up a burning log that had rolled out on the rug, and threw it back into the fireplace. The pre-frontal cortex certainly wasn't engaged then. Fortunately my contact with the log was brief, and I got away with singed, sooty hands.

It may also explain my actions on the Red Line train few years ago. I boarded the train at Fullerton, and the doors were closing. A woman standing on the platform thrust her hand in between the doors to force them open. Instead the doors, which are lined with thick rubber gaskets, closed on her hand. She tried to extract herself, but she was wearing a heavy bracelet that prevented her from doing so. And...the train started to move forward. She screamed. Time seemed frozen. Surely the engineer would see or hear her, I thought, but seconds passed by without the train stopping.

Every door is equipped with an emergency lever, which is round, red, and about the size of a tennis ball. I've heard it referred to as the "cherry." Pulling it down will force the doors open, and at least in theory, the engineer will then stop the train. I was about two or three seats away, but I somehow levitated out and up and yanked the cherry as hard as I could. The doors opened, and the train braked. The woman fell back, and then ran away, perhaps embarrassed at having done something so stupid. I sat back down, the eyes of all of my fellow passengers on me. A few minutes later, an irate engineer walked back to our car. "Who did that?!" I was silent, partially because I was a little rattled, and also because I didn't want a hassle. Nobody else said a word. He finally stalked back to the front cab, and we continued our trip to the Loop.


photo credit: thirdrail

CTA Stories: Is this a test, and did I pass?

Earlier this week, I was riding the Red Line to the Loop. I took a window seat near the door. A woman sat next to me; she was 30ish, blondish, and had a lot of luggage, some of which directly blocked my exit path. At the next stop, a blind man entered, feeling his way with a long, white cane. He found two empty seats next to the door, and directly kitty-corner to ours. He propped his cane next to him, and took out a braille copy of The National Geographic. It was fascinating to see him skim the raised dots. The movement of his fingers nearly replicated a reader's gaze, pausing to carefully scan items of interest, and brushing past those which didn't quite engage.

My stop, Jackson, was next. I stood and tried to negotiate my way past the woman's carry-on bag. Absorbed in her Blackberry, she swiveled her legs to one side, without standing. That made it extra difficult to get out. I staggered a little and bumped into the blind man's cane, knocking it over. The subway doors opened, which meant I had about 15 seconds to get off the train. I apologized to the man, who I then realized was also deaf. I kneeled down and tried to lift his cane back up, but the tip was stuck under the carry-on bag. While I was trying to do this in time to still make it out of the door, the woman leaned over and said "Excuse me, do you know how to spell 'casket?'" Huh? "Uh...C.A.S...K.E.T." While I was spelling, I managed to right the cane and catch the door just before it closed. "Thanks!"

CTA Stories: Strange Cargo

I've noticed my tales of public transportation fall into discrete categories in my mind, with one incident reminding me of similar. For example, one of my craigslist correspondent's stories about a shell man leaping off the train to escape an angry sucker reminds me of the guy I saw running down the El catwalk to escape the police chasing him on the ground. I'd probably call that category of story "Amazing Escapes" or somesuch. However, my favorite category is Strange Cargo, i.e. people transporting things for which they probably should have rented a handcart, U-Haul or cattle car. I can think of two right away.

A bed. Several years ago, I was riding the north-bound Red Line. At Monroe, five young people carried a bed on to the train. It was an old-fashioned metal hospital bed, with exposed springs. It was a struggle to get it in the door and then wedged down the aisle, and another to get it off again, at Chicago. I have no idea why the conductor didn't stop them.

A tree. On Christmas Eve, I was riding the west-bound Belmont bus when it stopped at Lincoln and picked up three passengers: two little girls, about seven and ten years old, and a four-foot-high Scotch pine. The girls wore the kind of faded, thrift-shop coats of the very poor. I figure that the guys at the lot probably just gave them the tree, or let them "buy" it for a handful of change. The bus driver never said a word, and just smiled and waved them on board. They dragged the tree down the aisle, needles flying everywhere.

I wondered: wasn't there an adult who could have purchased a tree for them? Did they know they needed a tree stand? Did they have decorations? I never asked these questions out loud. The children looked so triumphant, and it seemed wrong to cast doubt on the venture.

photo credit: e. english

CTA Stories: Division Bus

I've already told my three favorite Division bus stories, but there are a few left which warrant mention. In the summer of 1995, the rain stopped falling. And it got hot: very, very hot. Over 600 people died, most of them elderly, too terrified to leave their barricaded inner-city homes to seek comfort. It was insufferable, inescapable heat. The wind felt like a furnace blast, and rubber shoe soles became sticky when pressed against the broiling pavement. I had the good fortune to live in a a place with central air, albeit in East Village, a neighborhood that lacked comfort for most. Poor people in the neighborhood came up with strategies to survive: sitting in their cars with the motors idling, the air on a full blast, and of course, the open fire hydrant. So many fire hydrants were open that my landlords, living on the third floor of our building, had zero water pressure. I showered in a trickle. It only added to the stress, the feeling that something awful was about to happen.

So it was with an air of utter submission that we trooped, like cattle, on to the un-airconditioned #70 bus on a Sunday afternoon. I spotted one empty window seat--sweet! I then discovered why it was empty: the window was stuck. Looking around at the sweaty heads of my fellow passengers, all of them enjoying the roasting "breeze" coming in through the window, I decided to suck up and take a nice perspiration bath in my airless space.

I noticed that Moustache Guy was sitting in front of me. I saw him on the #70 bus all the time. He had an elaborate, waxed handlebar moustache, the ends of which projected far out from the sides of his face. I always wondered if it was some early version of a hipster ironic moustache, or perhaps a gesture of solidarity with then-Polish president Lech Walesa. A woman seated at the window in front of him was reading a book, her neck glossy with sweat. It was a nice day to enjoy a book while taking a bus ride through Hell.

The floor of the bus was wet. I wondered if some kids wearing bathing suits could have made it so. It seemed like a lot of water, some of it sloshing up and down the grooves in the rubber floor mats. The bus slowly rumbled west until it reached the outskirts of Cabrini Green, the massive high-rise housing project on the near west side. The driver stopped at the light at Larrabee. I noticed that his shoulders were shaking, as if he were laughing.

At the curb, two teenaged girls positioned themselves on either side of the bus. They had huge buckets of water which stood higher than their knees. The light turned green. "One, two, three!!!!" and they sloshed the bus on both sides at it moved forward. Behind my closed window, I could only see, not feel, the action. Inside the bus, much screaming. The woman held up her ruined book. Right in front of me, water streamed off of each side of Moustache Guy's handlebars. I noticed the bus driver's window was closed.

CTA Stories: Division Bus Extravaganza

I recently placed an ad in craigslist for people to share their best CTA stories. For the uninformed, that's the Chicago Transit Authority. I received a couple of good entries, but most were pretty lame. Yeah, yeah...you and your buddies mooned some girls from the Addison bus. Yawn. I moved to Chicago in 1984, and had the pleasure of taking public transportation when the city was still pretty rough around the edges. I have about a dozen stories, and keep thinking of more every time I have a chance to reflect. But, the #70 Division bus holds a special place in my heart.

For a period in the early to mid 90s, I lived in East Village, and took the Division bus to and from work. This took me from the swanky Rush Street/Gold Coast area, through the projects at Cabrini Green, and into my neighborhood, at that time still full of addicts, hookers and gang-bangers. The first week after I moved into my place, a gang headquartered across the street set our garbage cans on fire and pushed them against the back door of the building. Fortunately, the back door was steel, which (newsflash, morons) does not burn. Unfortunately, we had no garbage cans for three weeks.

As I mentioned, the route has provided me with endless anecdotes, like the time a woman stood on the sidewalk at Clark and Division, shouting to a man who had just gotten on the bus. "Turn yourself In! Darnell!!! TURN. YOURSELF. IN." Darnell opened the window, and said that he couldn't turn himself in until he bought Christmas presents for all the shorties. She countered by saying that he could get all his
charges dropped if he just turned himself in now. Who told her that, he asked. "Some guy."

Then, there was the man who, seeing me at the bus stop, across from his room in the Mark Twain Hotel ("Radio in every room"), was so enamored that he shouted at me out the window, ran downstairs, and crossed Division--all to touch my long hair, which I was wearing in two braided pigtails. Ewww. This was a comfortable style for hot weather, but a pervert magnet, as I soon discovered. I started wearing my hair in a bun, and my troubles vanished.

Another night, while waiting for the west-bound bus, a man took out a wicked-looking butcher knife and carefully sharpened it on a whetstone. The rest of us all gave him wide berth when we got on the bus. In retrospect, he was probably a worker at one of the small slaughterhouses on the west side, and was just getting his tools in order for the evening. But, hell.