What I Heard and Saw While Waiting on the Buses

Have you ever had one of those days when nothing seemed to go right? One day I’m waiting on the bus. Its running about 80 minutes behind schedule. I called the Metro Bus Office for a reason why and all I got was a recording telling me to press prompt 2 and then it hung up on me.

I was sweating profusely or more like a pig or a criminal being interrogated by police detectives, the temperature a mere 103 degrees, when this young black guy happily walks into the bus shelter all the while smoking a larger than life fat blunt. This older black lady went anatomically ballistic on the young man. Me, I just walked as far as I could from that nasty good smelling pungent aroma.

The innocent bus stop bystander is ranting on and on about him having no respect for elderly people and himself.

When he finished blowing the skunk smelling weed in the air, he looked directly into her evil sagging eyes and said. Why didn’t you just move away like that old black dude over there, than running your foul mouth on a person who really doesn’t care. Old woman I’m as high as a kite and you can’t blow my high with any of your ill time hypothesis.

Then he says out of his clear blue smoked out mind there are currently 27 ratified amendments (of which the first ten are known as the Bill of Rights) to the Constitution since its enactment. Then stoned boy asked her was she aware of the 4^th, 13^th and 24^th amendments of the Constitution?

I could hardly wait to hear where this conversation was heading as I moved closer back to the bus shelter even though there was still the smell of the weed he had smoked lingered about from his matching FUBU an American hip hop apparel company. FUBU stands for "For Us, By Us"  wearing attire.

Madame the 4^th amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and out requirements for search warrants based on me smoking weed in public except for probable cause.

That elderly wearing one of those 1944 going too or from church hats lady looked at him as if he was about to steal her monthly bus pass.

Then he said it’s undercover tea totter people like you that constantly remind me of the 13^th amendment, it abolishes dope smoking in public and involuntary usage, except for selling it to any FTA Agent. Let it be known to all yee nonbelievers he states in his best Thomas Jefferson impersonation the 21st Amendment: Details the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. State laws over alcohol and marijuana are to remain.

I was standing there in that unbelievable heat wondering to myself where did he get those quoted correctly Constitutional asinine thoughts from, as he walked away laughing to himself.

Most people who smoke weed do tend to find all things funny to themselves.

Ole weed smoky dude kind of reminded me of that Prominent defense attorney and Reform Democratic New York State Assemblyman Mark Lane, whose book Rush to Judgement (1966) was the first and best-selling critique of the Warren Commission white wash of the JFK assassination conspiracy, believed that Lee Harvey Oswald deserved to be represented by council, even after his death, in the Warren Commission hearings. Yes, you heard me correctly. So, he sent a brief to Earl Warren, which was also published in the UK Guardian on December 19, 1963. Following is a summation of Mark Lane’s defense brief, which indicates just a few of the myriad deficiencies, distortions and outright falsifications in the evidence presented to the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. Anyway, I know where that thought came from? Do you remember when Elmer Fudd went on trial for killing Bugs Bunny that silly wabbit? I did after I smoked some of the devil’s lettuce myself.

Because it got so late waiting on that bus to go to work. I thought that I would walk down to another bus stop where my girlfriend Alpha was waiting on me while she labored at panhandling cars for chump change.

When I finally arrived at her business bus shelter the first things she said to me was that her momma named her Alpha because of what it represented her being a dominant person or her behavior, especially with respect to socially aggressive.

My response to her each time she told that story was that I was glad her drunken mother hadn’t  named her Omega.

She would collect enough change from passing cars that stopped in front of the bus stop shelter to get her a pint of LTD liquor and me two cans of beer.

One day while we were pretending to be waiting on the bus she says I’m going to teach you how to hustle pretty boy. In my mind eyes I already knew I was hustling her. She had brought me gifts and made sure I kept a few dollars in my homeless pockets. She even went so far as to rent a room for us. When I went to see the place, I seriously asked her if the slum lord was paying her to live in that 8 by 8 windowless 400 dollar a month jail cell. I immediately headed back to residing up under the underpass. You know when a place has seen better days when you can see were a framed picture once hung. She didn’t stay there long because she had to share a bathroom with the other down and out tenants. Did I tell you that Alpha was a full blown alcoholic?

One scorching hot day she couldn’t wait her turn to use the uni sex bathroom, so she took a leak in an ice cooler that was sitting in the hallway. The outraged tenants complained to the slum lord. I’m watching the Steelers football game on her ancient TV. I look away from the tv and see someone sliding a piece a paper underneath the door. I pick it up and read it all the while she’s laying on the floor sleep calling hogs. The letter stated that she had 3days to vacate the premises. The slum lord was even willing to give Alpha a large portion of her first month rent back. (245 dollars).

She received two SSI checks a month. One on the first and one on the third. I got tired of being drunk every day, so I alienated myself from her. Someone found her dead at another rooming house on the southside of town with a pint of LTD in her hands.

Today I have two cars and a scooter so that I never have to wait or meet anyone else at a bus stop.