…from Ruggles to Ashmount, South Boston
The old man stumbled
awkwardly in the centre of the bus, as it jerked forward from the last stop. He
was waiting for a young guy on the aisle seat to make a way through to the
empty window seat. Sitting with legs wide apart, knees jammed against the seat
in front and plugged in to an alternative world of music behind his
shades, he wasn’t moving. I picked up my bag from the seat next to me and
the old man flopped down.
“All black people are so rude,” he said, fixing me in the eye. He was black.
Not all black people, surely, no more than white people?
“We’ll 99% of them. So that’s pretty much all, ha! And the bus drivers are the worst. If you ain’t got your money or your ticket absolutely ready for them, they shout ‘What you doing trying to get on this bus? Homeless folks don’t belong here.’ ”
Are you homeless?
“I lost my home about a year ago. Landlord evicted me. A No Fault eviction, but what can you do? Have to stay with my daughters now, but they don’t like it much. Me neither. You need a place of your own, ‘specially when you are on your own.” Silence. “You ain’t from round here. Where you from and what you doing here?”
I’m from London and I’m going to Burke High School for a conference this morning.
“I’m gettin' off before Burke. Goin' to rob a bank,” he laughed.
What
I’ve heard about US banks, that sounds like a good plan. But how could you be
sure it was their money you were stealing and not your neighbour’s?
Right.
October 31st.
“Who’s your President?”
We don’t have a President. We have a Queen…
“Oh yeah. That Mrs. Thatcher?”
No, she was the Prime Minister, like Tony Blair and David Cameron.
Oh, Winston Churchill?
“Yeah, that’s the one. ‘We shall fight them from
door to door. We shall fight them on the beaches, in the fields and in the
streets; we shall never surrender”. Silence. “That was a
tough guy.” Silence. “They sure don’t
make ‘em like him no more.”
