A RIDE

It was one of those warm clear September days with a nice breeze blowing up from the south. The time was somewhere around noon, and the bus was quite loaded although no one was standing. The fact that all busses are rather stuffy and hot in the first place and that on hot sunny days when they are loaded with people they become even more hot and more stuffy made the bus a mite uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a seat by a window. I had been standing for quite a while, however, so that for the moment I was very relieved just to be able to sit down. Besides heat itself hadn't bothered me much for several years and being able to sit caused me to overlook the stuffiness.

The bus was one of a new type that had been installed several months before. This being the first time I had cause to ride on one of them, naturally I started to examine the interior and to note improvements with which it must have been equipped. I noticed a few years back that a national semantics organization died after seven years of work when they discovered that they hadn't accomplished a thing. They never must have run across the word bus. That is one word that should have been duck soup for them. I can see where it might be somewhat difficult to define, but, if you ever see a bus, you certainly know what it is and will never forget what you saw. Actually of all the ways we have combined letters together to represent objects as words, the formation of the word bus to represent what it represents was one of the most fortunate. If there is anything that buses are, it is that they are, essentially, buses. There is certainly nothing pretty or beautiful about them. They are used as the last resort by the lazy and the unfortunate who desire some other means than those at hand for arriving at some destination. Those people who like to ride on buses never do because they are all in sanitariums. Yes, although some buses may have their motor in the front and others in the rear, once you have seen a bus there is no doubt that it is a bus.

The driver of the particular vehicle that I was on was uncommonly good considering the impossibility of his job. We jostled along with a minimum of jostles. Finally we were forced to stop and observe the progress of a slow freight train crossing our "T". I was finally rested enough to begin to notice the stuffiness when a little girl said in an excited voice to her wilting mother, "Mama, look at the train!" I thought of how nice it would be to get excited over our delay instead of getting irritated.

The study of the bus proving to be very poor stimulus, I moved my concentration to a little boy sitting in front of me who was in the process of removing one of the advertising cards from the racks that are fastened to the back of the seats. Advertising companies must like to amuse small children, for these cards certainly are of no interest to older people. The little boy examined the card very carefully, then put it back in the holder and stared at the ceiling. The little boy's mother got up. She went to the front of the vehicle and called to her son to follow. The son noticed that no one was at the back door. He couldn't see any reason for waiting in line so he skipped out the back. The mother chose to ignore her son's wit, however, and kept bucking the crowd. I moved to the seat made vacant, which was by a window. Now I could look out a window and breathe in the warm September air which was only slightly tainted by the smell of bus exhaust. Being an admirer of good literature, I moved my concentration to a billboard advertising beer.

1952