I almost feel like if I hadn’t taken the bus yesterday morning and again today, I would have missed out on something really special.  Like finding out that Bernard – my first driver – can’t read music at all, but if someone plays a couple notes of music, he can pick it up and play right along on the piano.  (He is obviously descended from the jazz improvisation greats of the mid-20th century.) His kids have the same talent, in fact.

I would have missed out on learning that the debate Darrell and one of the bus dispatchers were in just before he drove me to Auburn was about racial profiling – and that when Darrell is included in white colleagues’ social gatherings, he is often subjected to stories about “niggers” and then told, “But we don’t mean you.”

I would have missed hearing Bernard’s story about being wooed by the Rockford Transit Authority to come drive for them twenty-five years ago when he was a cross-country bus driver for Greyhound.  And his story about how he and his children were in a band at church, which is especially important to him because he credits God for having blessed him with the abundance in his life.  And of course his story about watching his grandson play basketball using the advice he’d shared after his own years of playing it as a kid.  This is why he thinks he’ll retire soon: he wants to spend more time enjoying his family, and especially his grandkids.

Bernard says that if there is a chance one of the riders will miss a connection at the transfer center, the driver will radio ahead and ask the other bus to wait.  He says that he can pick me up a block up from the actual stop, too, as long as I wave.  He wanted to make sure I knew he was going on vacation for a week, though, so that I wouldn’t miss a bus in case the substitute driver was a couple minutes early (or late) and didn’t know exactly where to look for me (so perhaps it’s a good idea to wait another week before I cut my walk a block short).  And he told me that I was a ray of sunshine in his day (because I’m friendly and chatty? appreciative? curious? – it didn’t matter – I was just glad to make him as happy as he’s been making me).

Darrell says that he doesn’t think it’s fair that RHA residents get brand new housing with new washers and dryers and everything so nice when hardworking people live in worse conditions.  A lot of those RHA people take advantage he says, and uses the woman he’d just dropped off at the last stop as an example.  She had gotten on carrying a baby and an umbrella stroller, pushing a preschooler in front of her.  “She gotta pay to ride the bus here to drop her kid off at school, then pay to ride it back home again,” he says, contrasting her struggle with the people who get free rides but don’t necessarily qualify.  “They manipulate the system.”

He has a good point.  It’s not fair.  But when I explained to him what Ron Clewer told my class about all the single moms that live in Fairgrounds who are struggling to raise their children alone – and who just want to live in a safe neighborhood while they go to school and work to create a better life for themselves and their families – he conceded that he had not known that was who most of the Fairgrounds residents are.  And he also conceded that no – it’s not fair to deny the majority the benefit of a decent home in a safe neighborhood just because of a small minority who take advantage.

Darrell is a good, hardworking man, I think.  He deserves a nice place to live as much as anyone does.  It’s not fair that anyone would have to live in a bad neighborhood, in a crumbling, drafty building, without an easy way to get to where he needs to be.

It truly hurts my heart to know that people like the Walton billionaires (Jim, Alice, S. Robson, and Christy) are worth over $30 billion apiece (according to the Forbes 400 list) while Wal-Mart workers don’t make enough money to even support themselves, much less a family.  Earlier today as a student was reading an article on segregation that I’d given him, he exclaimed that a statistic quoted could not be true.  It didn’t seem possible to him that the average black family’s gross income was HALF that of the average white family’s.  My student said this is “unfair.”  I encouraged him to choose a word that was more connotatively accurate – such as describing this as a GROSS INJUSTICE.

I had the luxury of getting rides home from friends the past two days.  I copped out and didn’t take the bus after school.  What would it be like if I didn’t have that option?  I feel guilty for having made that choice – like I betrayed the people for whom I’m doing this experiment, both those who don’t have a choice, and my students.

It’s only day four, and already this experience has been incredibly powerful.  I can only wonder how significantly my life will be changed after 24 more days…….