Mendel Letters 98 — The Singing Bus Driver
October 8, 2022
Dear Mendel,
Sometimes the unexpected lessons are the most important lessons that you learn. It is something I first learned from you, but I kept learning it over and over again.
After I was laid-off as teacher in September 1975 when New York City went bankrupt, I spent a year as a substitute teacher but when I got married in September 1976 I need to get a regular job. I had a couple of short term jobs driving delivery trucks, did some more substitute teaching, and then I took the transit test to become a New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority bus driver.
The qualifying test had two parts, a multiple choice written exam and a physical challenge. The multiple-choice part of the exam was easy for me and I scored very high. I think the only people with better scores were Vietnam era veterans who got bonus points. Hiring was done based on your test score. The previous time the test was given they offered jobs to everyone who scored in the seventies. This time, with many college graduates unable to find work because of the New York City financial crisis, you had to score above 90 to be considered. The physical exam, in response to a series of lawsuits challenging discrimination against women and people who did not meet the height requirement, was pass/fail. MTA buses did not have power steering. You sat in a mock driver’s compartment with a seat, a steering wheel, and a gas and brake pedal. You were either strong enough to turn the steering wheel or you weren’t. You were either tall enough to reach the gas and brake pedal or you weren’t. That was the physical test.
I started two-week bus driver training in January 1978. When it was over we had to choose a garage for our field placement. I selected the East New York Depot because it was close to both the community center and where we lived. An added benefit was that Troy, one of the older generation of center leaders was a dispatcher at the garage so I would know someone who could introduce me around. The field experience was another two weeks and then we had to pick from a list of open spots at different garages in Brooklyn. I decided to stay at the East New York Depot.
Transit had three different shifts for bus drivers, AMs, starting between 4 and 6 AM and running until between noon and 2 PM; PMs, starting between Noon and 2 PM and running until between 8 and 10 PM; and Midnights, starting after 10 running through the morning rush hour. I picked Midnights starting anytime between 12 and 2AM. Midnights meant I could nap after work and would be home for Heidi and Rachel after school and have dinner with the family and then sleep again from 8PM until I had to get up for work. We lived near the B83 bus route that would get me to the Depot in 20 minutes.
Starting salaries at transit were higher than for New York City teachers and the midnight shift had built in overtime, a night differential and a bonus for weekend work. The drawback for driving out of the East New York Depot on the Midnight Shift was that some of the routes were scary. I usually drove the B60 bus starting in Canarsie, Brooklyn and running north into Bushwick and ending at the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan. There was a long stretch in Bushwick that was destroyed during riots in the 1960s and the streets there were still lined with debris. Some people depended on the bus to shuttle to the subway and go to work, but there were also homeless people who didn’t have money and hoped to hitch a ride to get out of the cold in the winter or to feel some air conditioning in the summer and “wobblies,” high on alcohol or drugs. I never had any serious trouble, but I did keep a chair leg in my army surplus backpack that on more than one occasion I waved at someone to convince them to back away from me. Twice one of the “wobblies” was a former student from IS 292 or one of the high schools where I had been substituting. They both thought bus driver was a much better job than teacher.
Winter nights on dark streets could be cold, dark, and boring and I wasn’t really getting enough sleep. To help stay awake I used to sing camp songs from when I was a counselor at Camp Hurley. Some of the riders remembered me as the “Singing Bus Driver.” I was also overeating for the sugar rush and quickly gained about 20 pounds.
At night I had to drive slowly so I didn’t get to a stop early and cause someone going to work to miss the bus. Being “hot” was a no-no and if someone reported you, or you got caught by a dispatcher, you were penalized. I never got caught riding “hot” so I have no idea what the penalty was. During morning rush hour I was already exhausted and could never keep up with the other drivers on the route. Running late I picked up extra passengers so my bus was always “heavy.”
The top rule for a MTA bus driver was “No Accidents” because the MTA did not want to be sued. My friend Troy told me that as a dispatcher he was called to the scene of an accident where the driver was in tears. It was a minor fender bender but six people were lying on the floor moaning in pain. The driver said when he left the bus to call in the accident there were only four passengers. By the time he returned two people had snuck on and joined the other four lying on the floor. I was a MTA bus driver for only nine months and I had two minor accidents and was scheduled for retraining when in September 1978 I was finally called back to teaching. I really wasn’t a bus driver long enough to become really proficient at the job.
The most important lessons I learned as a bus driver I learned from the other drivers. Most of the drivers at the East New York Deport were African American men. These men took great pride in being bus drivers. They came to work and went home in full uniform rather than changing at the Depot. They were active in the Transit Workers Union, Troy had been a union delegate before becoming a dispatcher, and in their churches and community youth programs. A union job with union wages and benefits was a source of pride. In graduate school I had been studying about labor union organizing, but working with these guys gave me a completely different level of understanding about what it meant.
Many of the drivers were also mean checkers players. They played a version called “Flying Kings” where once a piece was crowned it could “fly” across the board. This led to fast matches, which was a necessity because we only had short breaks. Some of the guys, when they sat down to play, would pull out a knife and plunge the tip into the table to show they were serious. I was okay as a player, I won a few times, but couldn’t challenge the best.
You need buddies on the job and I was lucky when I met Steve. Steve was African American, from a transit authority family, an army veteran, and an amateur photographer. We bonded over photography and breakfast. We usually ate at a southern-style café across the street from the Depot that served eggs, grits, and coffee. Steve started coming around to the Center with me and later married Anita who worked with Judi at the day care center. Steve made a career out of transit although he left “surface” and moved to the subway system where he was a motorman and later a trainer and dispatcher. Steve and I remained friends for over forty years.
You son
Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.
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