T. GAMBLE: An intriguing mode of travel

My 13-year-old daughter headed to Washington, D.C., this week on a bus with about 40 other junior high kids from her school. I don’t often do this, but please include this trip on your prayer list — not for my daughter, mind you, but rather for the poor driver of the bus, whoever that may be. He or she might as well just check into the Phoebe Putney psych ward upon the return from this trip.

I worry about sending my precious girl to Washington. She could be exposed to all types of sexual depravity, drug use, immoral conduct and criminal activity.

Then again, maybe this year they won’t visit Congress.

The bus ride is what really intrigues me. Let’s face it. Bus riding is not exactly the most glamorous mode of transportation one can experience. It is slow and cramped and folks decide to do things like sing “99 bottles of Beer on the Wall,” except in today’s politically correct world a minor cannot say beer and must say bottles of pop on the wall.

That, in itself, is enough to make me slam my head in the car door 99 times. Bottles of pop, for crying out loud! Next thing you know, kids will be singing, instead of “Whiskey River take my mind,” “Mountain Dew River take my mind.”

When I was a young man, barely 16 years old, I took the bus from Dawson to Atlanta to see a friend. I would have driven, except for the fact I’d lost my driver’s license for some misdeed or another and my Father was in no way sympathetic to my plight, saying something to the effect of: “If you act like a fool, you have to live your life like a fool.”

I took that to mean fools rode the bus.

No one told me it takes eight hours to ride a bus from Dawson to Atlanta. I knew it took three hours to drive a car there, and that included stopping at the rest stop on the other side of Columbus.

My parents consider the rest stop on the other side of Columbus as the mecca of rest stops. They could be rushing me to the hospital with a limb cut off and they’d still first stop at the Columbus rest stop before heading on to the hospital. If, by chance, you are pregnant traveling with my parents and you go into labor in the car around Columbus, there is at least a 50-50 chance you will have the baby at the Columbus rest stop, because you can be sure you will be stopping there.

But I digress.

It takes eight hours because the bus stopped at every small town between here and Atlanta — Americus, Montezuma, Manchester, Griffin … hell, for all I know, Knoxville, Tenn. At every stop, the one or two new add-on riders looked like they were shocked the bus actually arrived.

Come to think of it, the way the bus looked I don’t blame ‘em.

They’d take 20 minutes to get on. They talked to the ticket-taker, to the few folks standing around outside, and to the bus driver. I finally surmised, for these people, the bus stop was the highlight of their day, which was now, by the way, becoming night. Listen, I was 16 years old and in pretty good shape and I needed a chiropractor by the time I got off that thing.

I then had to wait in the bus station for my friend’s dad to pick me up after I called him from a pay phone. There in this spacious area that looked about as clean as a service station bathroom, I got propositioned by a 60-year-old man.

I damn near died. I came all the way from Dawson and a 60-year-old man wanted to take my virginity. Things like that just didn’t happen back in good ol’ Dawson, or if they did Aunt Bertha made sure nobody talked about it.

I managed to reject the crusty old man’s advances and made it to my friend’s house. I think I stayed a few hours before it was time to ride back on the bus to Dawson.

Come to think of it, I may just get my baby and take her back home. Far as I know, right now, I’ve got my license.

Baby, I’m on the way! Don’t you stop in a bus station until I get there.

Email columnist T. Gamble at [email protected].