Adventures In Busing.

My wife and I get local eggs from a friend of hers with a farm. It’s a bit out of town but chickens have been allowed within Nashville’s city limits since 2014—and chickens only. Roosters are definitely not allowed but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard crowing once or twice in certain areas so either some people have roosters or are doing a pretty good imitation of one at six in the morning, which, now that I think about it, wouldn’t be that surprising. Hey, Nashville attracts some weird people or, in my case, produces them, but that’s another story.

The variety of eggs we get reminds me that a few years ago a young woman who worked at the same place I do and who lived in my neighborhood started riding the same bus as me and we’d walk part of the way home together. It was kind of nice sharing the trip with someone else. I learned she was originally from Athens, Georgia, and I’m still not sure if I committed a faux pas by saying, “I love the B-52s!” but I think we bonded over the fact that it’s another southern city that produces its own kind of weirdness.

She also told me about her chickens. She was one of the first in the area to get a chicken permit and had her own backyard coop and seven different chickens of various breeds, each with their own distinct personality. She made having backyard chickens sound like so much fun I was tempted to talk my wife into getting some of our own but there were also some problems. She’d had twelve but lost five to predators, probably foxen, although we also have coyotes and raccoons in the area. There was also the mess and the coop needed regular cleaning.

“And then there are the eggs,” she said, sighing. “Sometimes I so many eggs I get sick of them. I’ve tried every possible recipe for eggs I can find. The other night I made deviled eggs just for something different and my husband ate most of them in one sitting.”

Actually that sounded pretty good to me. At every family gathering and potluck I’ve been to someone brings a plate of deviled eggs and I have to remind myself not to eat all of them. That’s not weird, right?  

When I heard about a riverboat getting stuck on a sandbar my first thought was, It could be worse. Sure, I doubt it was a pleasant experience but they were always within sight of land and it seems to have been a pretty easy rescue. And I had a worse experience on a riverboat once. I was with my cousin Kevin.

I wanted to like Kevin, really. We weren’t that far apart in age and we both liked science fiction and I was pretty easygoing and could find something positive about most people, but Kevin complained about everything, and he had no filter. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years and when my aunt and uncle and cousins came to visit the first thing Kevin said to me when I went up to say hello he said, “Wow, you’ve really grown. The last time I saw you you were a short, dumpy little kid. I hope you’re not as annoying as you used to be.” So our visit was off to a terrific start. Then he complained about lunch, that the tuna fish didn’t have relish in it, that we had corn chips instead of tortilla chips. He complained that there was nothing to do in my neighborhood. He complained that I stayed up too late and got up too early, except for the night when I went to bed early and then he complained about that. We went to a pizza place I liked. He took one bite of the pizza and told me there was a pizza place where he lived that was better, but I knew that if we’d visited him and gone to that pizza place he’d find something to complain about. The only thing that did make him happy was that we had an Intellivision game console and he and I actually spent some happy time together playing video games, but my parents put strict time limits on the game use and he complained about that. Not to my parents, though. I was the lucky one who got to hear all his complaints. Then, a little over halfway through the visit, although it seemed longer, the Intellivision broke and if you guessed that he complained about that give yourself ten bonus points.

I suggested we go see Gremlins which was out that summer. He told me he’d read the book and it was “really stupid” so he had no interest in seeing the movie.

“Maybe the movie’s different,” I suggested, trying really hard to sound cheerful.

“The movie’s exactly like the book,” he said. Then he had to complain that we only had crunchy peanut butter and he liked the creamy kind. I had a new pocketknife at the time and I seriously thought about jabbing it into his neck but the only thing that stopped me is I didn’t want to damage it.

My parents had booked a ride on the General Jackson riverboat and, as far as I know, my aunt and uncle enjoyed it, and I got a kick out of it too. There wasn’t much for kids to do but I had fun just walking around and exploring it. Or I would have if Kevin hadn’t followed me around the entire time complaining about how boring it was and the river looked terrible and there was a small waterfall off the starboard side that I thought looked pretty cool but he wouldn’t shut up about how pathetic it was. I was seriously tempted to throw him overboard but I knew getting away from him wouldn’t be that easy and I didn’t want to listen to him complain about the rescue.

Source: imgur.com

So after I wrote about the boneheaded plan to blow up southern California’s desert as a way of building a speedier alternative to Route 66 I read about something that’s actually an amazingly good idea: solar canopies over parking lots. Back in April an IKEA store in Baltimore put solar panels over its parking lot, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the city of Santa Cruz have put solar canopies over parking lots too.

It’s one of those so-simple-it’s-smart kind of ideas. The solar panels can generate electricity and they can provide shade at the same time, and if you’ve ever had to hoof it over a parking lot on a hot day, or even a cold day when the sun is out, you know how warm the pavement can get. And hot pavement adds to climate change so cooling that down even a little and capturing some of the energy seems like a really good idea.

Solar canopies can provide energy for the stores that use them, including the lights in the parking lot, or, with the rise of electric cars, they can power charging stations. And imagine some of the otherwise unused space on the roofs of parking garages helping power the lights, ticket booths, and gates on the floors below.

I know a lot more is needed than just putting up the canopies—there’s wiring that’s needed and solar panels obviously don’t work all the time, but still there are a lot of benefits.

And here’s a funny thought: solar power is nuclear power. The source just happens to be a relatively safe 93 million miles away.

Source: TYWKIWDBI

I’m not a fan of millennial-bashing or bashing any generation. Singling out a group of people who happened to be born within a certain time frame and assuming they all share similar characteristics seems singularly stupid to me which, I know, is totally something one of us Gen Xers would say.

Anyway I can’t drive a stick-shift. Well, I probably could but with a lot of trouble. Manual transmissions were still widely used when I came of age but never covered in my driver’s ed class and I was okay with that. I’m still okay with that. I still don’t get the appeal of driving a stick-shift vehicle. Almost everyone I’ve known who had one told me, “It gives me more control of the vehicle.” That’s the problem, as far as I’m concerned. I’m one of those people for whom a car is just a way to get from one place to another and while I enjoy the journey I want it to be as carefree and easy as possible. Starts and stops, turns, lane changes, and other drivers are all more than enough for me to concentrate on while I’m driving and even on long empty stretches there are things to think about like, am I going the right way? or would German vanity plates stretch halfway around the car?  I don’t need to have to worry about pushing in the clutch and shifting from second to third in the middle of highway traffic.

Same source but much more accurate.

A friend once did try to teach me to drive her stick-shift pickup truck. We were on some back roads early on a Thursday morning and she thought that would be a good time and place to teach me this important life skill that, honestly, I’ve never needed and probably never will. She was a good teacher too—patient and giving clear directions, but every time I tried to shift gears the engine made a noise like a chainsaw going through a full orchestra. I’d shut it off and restart, until the third try when it wouldn’t restart. We switched seats so she could take over and it still wouldn’t start. We waited a few minutes. Then we waited a few more minutes. Finally we gave up and walked to her house which, fortunately, wasn’t that far away. A few hours later her husband came home. He walked down to the pickup to see if he could figure out what the problem was and it started for him on the first try. There’s something to think about.

Ozone Falls

On our of first full day at Camp Ozone all campers were taken to see Ozone Falls, which was a nice little hike–less than a mile, and usually the counselors did it right after breakfast so all the kids would be worn out until lunch. I think they also did it early because seeing the falls was a pretty amazing thing and the counselors didn’t want to have to hear, “When are we going to see the falls?” every five minutes. It was my third summer so I was a Camp Ozone veteran who knew exactly what to expect and of course I’d been saying to the counselors, “When are we going to see the falls?” every five minutes since I arrived, but that’s another story.

The hike to the falls took us down the road and under an I-40 overpass. As we were walking a kid named Ken, an first-timer at Camp Ozone, glommed onto me and asked if I knew anything about trucks. I’m still not sure why he chose me. I’m pretty sure I didn’t look like the sort of kid who knew anything about trucks. Then again neither did Ken who, in his t-shirt and shorts, looked pretty much like me and all the other kids in our group. So I admitted I didn’t know anything about trucks except that they were big and had eighteen wheels.

“I know everything about trucks,” Ken went on. “I know every model. Do you know what the most expensive brand of truck is?”

Since it had already been established that I knew nothing about trucks I’m not sure how he thought I could name even a single brand, let alone know anything so specific, but Ken’s enthusiasm was making me interested in trucks so I played along.

“Peterbilt.”

I have no idea if this was true. This long before the internet, and even longer before the internet became available on devices most of us carry in our pockets, although Peterbilt doesn’t even make the Top 10 for most expensive semi-trucks, and the Wikipedia page just for semis is a very deep rabbit hole of information, which makes me wonder if Ken really knew as much as he claimed. Maybe he really did know a lot about trucks, though, which would have been impressive for a kid at the time.

For some reason Ken and I separated after that. It wasn’t personal. I liked him and, as I said, his enthusiasm for trucks appealed to me–any time I talk to someone who’s obsessed with a subject, especially if it’s something I’ve never thought about, I get interested. I may not share their passion but I still feel like they open up a whole new way of seeing the world. Anyway Ken and I were in separate cabins and, after the trip to the falls, our counselors took us in different directions. Camp also only lasted a week so any lasting friendships were rare.

It’s ironic to me that we now have the internet and that I can fact-check things Ken said, as best I remember them, but I’ve forgotten his last name so I can’t track him down. Even if I could I’m not sure I’d want to. I prefer to have Ken only in my memory, and to imagine he’s still somewhere out there truckin’ along.

Less than a month before my eighth birthday I saw my friend Tony get hit by a car while riding his bike. He and I were going somewhere—he was going to ride and I was going to walk because I hadn’t learned to ride a bike yet. He sailed down the hill right, past the stop sign, into the intersection just as a car was coming. He should have stopped, but I’m pretty sure the driver was also speeding. The driver got out of the car and started screaming and a bunch of people came out of their houses and stood around, probably blocking traffic. Tony’s father came running and yelled for someone to call an ambulance. Maybe someone already had. An ambulance came and a woman in a white uniform got out and did something. I couldn’t see anything because of the protective ring of people around Tony.

I can place the year and even the date precisely because I stood there in shock for a very long time and then turned around and went home. That night I watched Steve Martin’s first TV special which, thanks to the internet, I know was shown on November 22^nd, 1978. I was terrified Tony was going to die, or that he’d be permanently injured, but Steve Martin took my mind off that for a while. A few weeks later Tony was back at school. I’d picked out a toy truck that his mom took to him while he was in the hospital and I saw him playing with it at the bus stop.

Well, that’s not very funny, but this PSA from Denmark about the importance of wearing helmets is, so it can take your mind off that.

Source: Getty Images

There was a dead armadillo on the side of the road. They’re a fairly recent arrival here; I think we first started seeing them in Nashville around ten years ago, and while they’re cute they also carry leprosy and can tunnel under houses undermining the foundations so when you see an armadillo you really can say, “There goes the neighborhood,” but that’s another story.

I hate to see roadkill of any variety so I felt a little bit happy reading a recent article about overpasses and underpasses that provide a safe way for wildlife to safely cross roads. In one part of Montana they’ve reduced accidents caused by cars hitting animals by 90%, and some of them, like this one in Canada’s Banff national park, are really cool looking:

Source: Enjoy The Silence

Some also go under the road so that smaller animals like salamanders and even larger animals like alligators to go in search of food and mates safely. This isn’t just important because it decreases the amount of potential collisions for both animals and humans. It also allows groups of animals of the same species who might have been cut off from each other to interact and have offspring, reducing the amount of harmful inbreeding that can happen when animal groups are cut off from each other.

And, sure, there are some potential downsides. One that the New York Times article mentions is that people might get the idea that as long as they’re creating over- or underpasses they can expand the roads. It’s not hard to see why this is a problem. Anywhere cars go they bring pollution, whether it’s noise or exhaust or some asshole who has to throw half a milkshake out of the window as he goes by.

I can think of another possible problem: the overpasses could make elk, deer, moose, and other animals sitting ducks—not to mention ducks, which raises the question first asked by Chico Marx, “Viaduct? Vy not a chicken?” I think of that because of a distant relative I knew as Uncle Rupert who once brought venison to a family gathering and proudly told everyone that after years of trying to get a deer he finally figured out that if he held the gun while his brother Russel held the spotlight…If you aren’t familiar with this hunting technique it’s probably because it’s illegal, and is one of the reasons my grandfather said that between them Rupert and Russel had one full brain but that most of the time neither one used it. The following Thanksgiving Uncle Rupert outdid himself by bringing a pretty funny looking turkey that turned out to be an endangered osprey. “At least,” he told everyone proudly, “I didn’t need a spotlight to bring it down.”

While things are gradually returning to normal, or at least a new normal, there’s still no clear word on when I’ll return to my old office. The place where I work is still under semi-lockdown which makes sense: it’s near a hospital and the higher-ups prefer to err on the side of caution.  The other day my wife, who’s arranged to work from home permanently, and I were discussing what we’d do when I do finally go back.

“Maybe we can just skip paying for a parking pass,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind driving you to the bus stop. And then on days when I’m not working you can get a day pass.”

That she offered to drive me to the bus stop surprised me at first but then I started thinking about it. We both get up at the same time every morning because of the canine alarm so it’s not as though she’d get any extra sleep if I drove to work, and, as short as it may be, the drive to the bus stop would be a chance to spend a little more time together before starting the work day.

And I thought about all the benefits of riding the bus. I get to sit back and relax, I don’t have to worry about finding a parking spot, I get some exercise walking to and from the bus stop. In a small way me riding the bus benefits other people too.

Back in the pre-pandemic times whenever I’d drive to work I’d pass by people standing at bus stops. Some of them I even recognized. I’d frequently see a guy I knew from the bus. We never talked but I remembered him because he’d sometimes ask the driver to pull up about fifty feet so he could get off at the entrance to his apartment building. Why there was a stop fifty feet from the entrance to an apartment building and not, you know, right in front of it, is a mystery to me, but the bus drivers were always willing to go the extra distance.

When I’d see him, or others, I’d always think about pulling over and offering to give them a ride. There are a lot of reasons I never did. For one thing if there was heavy traffic there was no way I could safely pull over—I’m not driving a bus—and anyway by the time I recognized anyone or even saw someone at a bus stop I was already going by. For another thing I don’t know if anyone waiting for a bus would accept a ride from a complete stranger. I’ve had strangers offer to give me a ride. The only time I ever took one up on it was when I was chasing a bus I’d just missed and a guy pulled over and offered to drive me to the next stop so I could catch it. I’ve forgotten his name now but I’ll always be grateful to him for that.

To get back to my point, though, the reason public transportation exists is because people use it. Nashville’s public transportation isn’t great but as long as people use it we can hopefully prevent it from getting any worse. Maybe we can, collectively, make it better—although that would be more likely if more people rode the bus. I’m just one rider so, as I said, my contribution will be small, but at least I’ll be contributing to the continuing bus service, and that will benefit other people.

This doesn’t have anything to do with Memorial Day so here’s something that does.

So a guy hijacked a school bus full of kindergarteners and that could be the beginning of a really dark story but instead it turned out to be the beginning of a hilarious story. The kids kept asking the hijacker questions, and although the news reports don’t say so I’m pretty sure at least one of them asked, “Why aren’t you taking your own car?” and he got so annoyed he finally got off the bus, although I’m sure it was, “Why is the sky blue?” that pushed him over the edge. No adult, even those of us who know why the sky is blue, has ever been able to answer that question to a child’s satisfaction, but that’s another story. The bus driver hails the kids as the real heroes and while I think he’s not giving himself enough credit—he stayed calm which certainly helped—he’s also right. The kids really saved the day here just by being typical kids who are curious about the world and I hope they never lose that curiosity.

That’s really all that can be said about that story but it did get me thinking about how many people are annoyed when they’re on a plane and some other passenger has a crying baby. Maybe it would get to me more if I flew more regularly but when I’ve been on a plane and there’s a crying baby I just feel bad for the parent or guardian who’s doing everything they can to calm the kid down and who will inevitably have to listen to a lot more crying even after they’ve left the plane, and I feel bad for the baby. That moment on every flight when my ears pop is bad enough for me, and I know it’s coming. If I were less than a year old and had my ears suddenly feel like they were stuffed full of cotton and then clear I’d be crying too.

It also made me think about the summer I worked as a camp counselor. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t a hijacker but someone who voluntarily worked with children but the kids’ questions never annoyed me, not even, “When’s lunch?” because usually the time they started asking that my own blood sugar was getting low and while that generally makes me testy I understood how they felt. And we had enough activities, from water slides to modeling clay, that I could distract them if they asked any questions I couldn’t answer.

Possibly the only time the questions got awkward was one morning before the camp activities started. I often got there before the kids and would bring a book to pass the time, and one young girl pointed at my copy of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and asked, “What’s that about?” I would have felt guilty lying about it so I carefully explained that it was about a young woman who wants to be a writer and attempts suicide, and that it was somewhat autobiographical and that the woman who wrote it eventually dd commit suicide. I braced myself for a lot of uncomfortable questions, but the young girl just said, “That sounds interesting. I may read that someday.”

To avoid any further awkward moments I left The Bell Jar at home after that and just brought a small volume of tales by Edgar Allan Poe.