We know that all is impermanent; we know that everything wears out. Although we can buy this truth intellectually, emotionally we have a deep-rooted aversion to it. - Pema Chodron
The Kansas City Station was much smaller than St. Louis. There was a central waiting room, a restaurant, and the ticket counter. The interior was all white tile and blue highlights. There were a few people milling around, waiting for buses. The first thing I did was take a piss. The next thing I did was make a bee line for the restaurant for a cup of coffee and hoping to find something to eat that wasn't an overly expensive gastrointestinal nightmare.
There's a fine line when you're eating on the road and on the cheap. And there are a few things to consider, beyond the obvious aversion to taking a dump in a rolling porta-potty. The first (and most obvious) thing to remember is that bus station food is overpriced. The second (and still probably most obvious) thing to remember is that if it's not cooked to order, it's probably been sitting for awhile.... especially the tuna and egg salad sandwiches. The third thing ... which, if you're paying attention at all to what you eat, will be obvious... is that if it IS cooked to order, whatever food you're eating started the day in a freezer. And you probably don't want to think about what petri dish it began it's life in.
A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night. -
Marilyn Monroe
Getting a few hours of sleep on that nearly deserted bus to Kansas City was almost as good as sex. (Almost.) I was so tired from the St. Louis Station that I didn't realize how tired I was. By the time the sun came up and the bus pulled into the station, I felt a little good enough that I wanted a cup of coffee and something to eat.
The Kansas City Station was much smaller than St. Louis. There was a central waiting room, a restaurant, and the ticket counter. The interior was all white tile and blue highlights. There were a few people milling around, waiting for buses. The first thing I did was take a piss. The next thing I did was make a bee line for the restaurant for a cup of coffee and hoping to find something to eat that wasn't an overly expensive gastrointestinal nightmare.
| Good Mood Food? Finger Lickin' Good? You decide! |
There's a fine line when you're eating on the road and on the cheap. And there are a few things to consider, beyond the obvious aversion to taking a dump in a rolling porta-potty. The first (and most obvious) thing to remember is that bus station food is overpriced. The second (and still probably most obvious) thing to remember is that if it's not cooked to order, it's probably been sitting for awhile.... especially the tuna and egg salad sandwiches. The third thing ... which, if you're paying attention at all to what you eat, will be obvious... is that if it IS cooked to order, whatever food you're eating started the day in a freezer. And you probably don't want to think about what petri dish it began it's life in.
But there's also the last, immutable fact of life on the road. At some point, to keep your strength and wits about you, you have to eat, since staying hydrated will only get you so far. So by all means, be aware of what you eat. But at some point, eat something.
The coffee was infinitely more important and the food merely an afterthought. Luckily, bus station shit slingers HAVE learned that some people feel much safer with fruit. My choice... nestled between the pre-made lunch meat and tuna salad sandwiches (each of which had a sticker indicating that they were prepared on Wednesday... which happened to be the day of the week... I thought. But there was no indication that it was THIS PARTICULAR Wednesday...) and the single serving bottles of whole, chocolate, and strawberry flavored milk, were some diminutive apples and shrunken oranges. An orange sounded good... Vitamin C, one of the great healers from Mother Nature's Kitchen, seemed like a good idea, even if the orange wasn't all that much to look at. They weren't rotting, and cost less than a dollar each.
SOLD
That orange and a large black coffee cost me just over $3.00. Standing in line to pay for my meal, I watched the older, tired, rotund black woman snap the heads off two customers who tried to pay with $20 bills; apparently she was low on change. One patron... who it seemed like was entirely too familiar with the bus station (It's true... you start to recognize your own after a while) tried to pay for a cup of coffee with a wrinkled up double-sawbuck. When she opened up a Tyler Perry style retribution on her (Yes. Really.) he then offered to buy a toy truck in order to increase the amount of the sale. She dismissed the toy and waved him off, not mentioning the coffee.
(He later tried to tell her she took his money and never gave it back. But neither he nor the woman behind the counter were convinced and he stopped mid-con and wandered away.)
When I got to the register I paid for my small meal with $5... which garnered me a smile... and from the look of the smile, she apparently did not contort her mouth into that shape very often.
I took my time eating the orange. One, because peeling it took a bit of time and the skin was a little thicker than I would have liked. But I also made a point to eat the orange slowly because I wanted to enjoy it. Some pleasures are fast ones. Some are slow, and should be enjoyed thoroughly. An orange. A cup of coffee.
Simple things. Not perfect. But in the context, not bad at all.
My next order of business was to find a place to charge my phone. As it turned out, the Kansas City Station planned for such an emergency and had installed a cell phone charging station... a tiled counter at the edge of the waiting area lined with electric outlets. And unlike the so-called "courtesy stations" at the St. Louis Depot, the outlets were actually good outlets.
None of that hollowed out loosey-goosey plug feel that I have come to associate strongly with St. Louis.
After a while my phone was charged enough to use, so I checked my mail and messages. While I was doing that, a guy wearing a camo print hat and t-shirt asked if he could borrow my plug to charge his phone. He said he'd lost his. I let him, primarily because there's nothing worse than needing to get a call out and being unable to. His name was Mark.
Mark was from Minnesota... he assured me a rural part of the state, far from the hectic city life around Minneapolis/ St. Paul... and was on his way to St. Louis. He'd bought a ticket and was ready to board a bus several hours before; but his ticket was a standby ticket and the bus was full. He needed to call his friend... a buddy from home he was on his way to see. Mark told me he traveled from the tundra in search of work. He was an out of work carpenter. He asked me what I was doing and where I was headed. I told him, quite honestly, that I wasn't entirely sure and that I simply wanted to get out of St. Louis. This made him naturally leery, I think, because after his phone was charged enough for a call and after I didn't have any cigarettes to sell him, he wandered off.
While I was continuing to charge my phone, I looked at the chart outlining bus departure times and destinations. South to Dallas (NOOOOOO!) was an option. West to Minneapolis was also an option. Eastbound, back through St. Louis (HELL NO) was a consideration.
The next bus to Minneapolis was scheduled to leave at 3:00pm. According to my watch, it was around 10:30 am. I had friends in Minneapolis... friends I had intended to visit on my return swing from Oregon. I considered piecing together a path to Phoenix, which, would have included... UGH.... Texas. I also considered maybe trying to get to Salt Lake City. (I've had a powerful urge to creep out some Mormons lately. I can only assume that it's some reaction to Mitt Romney's hair.) I messaged my friends, Dave and Jamie, to see if I could bump up my visit to that night without putting them out.
As I waited, I was approached by another man, who asked if I could watch his cell phone charge while stepped outside to smoke. Again, I accommodated. His named turned out to be Joe. Joe was on his way back to St. Louis. He'd come to Kansas City after splitting from his wife. He couldn't find work, which, from what he said, seemed to be the primary reason for the fighting. He had hoped that KC would provide more opportunities for work and a fresh start from a broken relationship; of course, neither worked out, and he was slinking back (not his words) in order to "work things out... you know... for the kids."
He too asked me where I was heading and what I did for a living. It's the sort of generic demographic information that people ask when they travel in order to see if there are any essentials in common. After all, it's not outside the realm of possibility that you can meet someone from the same state as you when traveling. And when there's a common mode of transportation, there's a better than average chance that there maybe some career similarities. Or, at least sympathies.
When talking to friends, or to you, Dear Readers, I refer to myself as hobo. A bum. A pilgrim. A traveler. All of these are, in some technical way, true. And they take up all of my time.
But they are not, strictly speaking, considered career paths, anymore than being a poet is considered a viable occupation. (Viable -- code for tax paying, debt accruing, time wasting, soul killing filler of time between assumed adulthood and death.) I told Joe wasn't sure where I was headed, and that I didn't do anything in particular.
He too, quickly moved off.
Eventually my phone was more or less completely charged, and I remembered that the restaurant sold a brand of cigarillos I sometimes smoke. And I still had time until the bus to Minneapolis was going to leave, plus I hadn't heard whether my arrival was propitious. So I bought a cigar and went outside to the smoking area, sat on a bench and enjoyed the breeze.
The smoking area was in back and partially under the large awning that made up the bus bay. I'd managed enough rest that I felt good, had enough coffee and nourishment that I felt refreshed, and was smoking a cigar that, while not my favorite, was one I liked, for the money. A cigarillo (not to be confused with a little cigar... trust me.) is a rare gentile pleasure. I have pipe, that's true, and some decent cheap shag. I also still have a few pinches of the good tobacco left from the shop in Cincinnati. But a cigarillo is a sweet respite, a calming balm, especially when you can sit out in a light warm breeze and enjoy it without having to be rushed,. without having to feel desperate for time or space or feel guilty about annoying the smokeless minions that would deny me nicotine and drive Hummers... rather than smoke a cigarette after enjoying a particularly enjoyable hummer.
One of the things I've noticed as I've been traveling, is the quiet desperation that people continue to live under. The news tells us the recession is over. I, for one, don't believe it. Because I see it everywhere I go. People roaming around, looking for work. Mark and Joe are only two examples from one stop. I run into people all the time who are trying to find some place in the world, some identity. Because we do tend to associate identity with occupation (AKA = the shit we do to earn money in the hopes of buying shit we don't need) ...in this country at least, and certainly in any culture that prizes occupation above happiness, that insists we take on obligations that are neither natural nor necessary for living or happiness, and that judges us accordingly for seeming to lack ambition.
And the more of this I see, the more I am convinced that I am far luckier and far richer than anyone who can answer one of those generic demographic questions in a more predictable fashion.
I got word from Dave that my arrival would be fine, that there was a spare bed and that I was welcome to it as long as I needed it. Encouraged, thusly, I finished my cigarillo, walked back inside and up to the ticket counter. The woman behind the counter looked stressed... fairly common among those employed in any customer service industry. She was younger than me by a couple of years, auburn hair tied back, blue eyes, pale skin. Attractive really. So I smiled, asked about the 3pm bus to Minneapolis. She was polite, smiled a little, and told me the bus really left at 2:45 and asked if I needed a ticket.
I told her I didn't, because of my Discovery Pass; but, hoping maybe to improve her mood, or at least make her feel better about her job, I told her about The Mystery Box in St. Louis and asked if she didn't think that was odd. The story seemed to make her smile... or it could've been my hat, the oil cloth hat does inspire smiles from some people... and she told me that it probably wasn't strange for St. Louis. I agreed.
"Yeah," she said. "There's probably not a lot that's strange for St. Louis." Then she told me... probably some latent reinforced job training... that if I saw anything strange like that there to please say something. I promised I would, and found a place to sit and wait for the bus.
As I walked away, she was still smiling.