Travels With TonooseArchives of Traveling BlogsBy Anthony BuccinoRetrieved from the Pages of Uncle Tonoose |
BUS - TRAIN LIGHT RAIL AUTO FOOTPATH |
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Five Years on the Rails In five years of using public transportation to get from northeastern Essex County to the Hudson River at Jersey City, I've seen a few things that stand out ... Jackson Wanna Be ...
In the mornings on the PATH from Newark to Exchange
Place, there was this old black man with head phones
singing to the Michael Jackson song "Remember." This guy
must have thought he was in the chorus - because he
would be bopping along silently and then shout out
"REMEMBER!" Then be quiet again. He kept singing his
part when it came around again on the CD. And the funny
thing about it was that each time he sang out, everybody
around him was surprised. I haven't seen this guy in a
while.
One night going
home on the PATH, a woman came in from the station and
slipped like a Keystone Kop onto the floor on some vomit
left by a previous passenger. The woman laid there, on
the floor, in the slop, not moving. Finally someone
pushed the CALL button. The train pulled out of the
station anyway. By the time we got to Journal Square the
conductor showed up and they helped the lady off. They
asked for a witness to tell them what happened. The
witness stayed at the station to give a report. The
conductor asked which CALL button was used so he could
de-activate it. We headed home.
One morning boarding
the PATH in Newark, the train was about to leave when a
woman came dashing to the car. She fell and it turned
out her foot was caught in the gap between the car and
the station railing. When the cops came we all had to
get off the train. The woman laid there on the ground.
Embarrassed, I'm sure, with her foot caught there. I
thought we should have all gotten on the train and
leaned the other way and that would have opened the gap
and she could have pulled her foot loose. But nobody
asked me. We all just stood around and watched. When
they finally got the woman's foot free, they found a
chair for her to sit in. Before we could board the
train, someone from PATH came and measured the gap
between the car and the railing. We finally got on the
car and headed to work. No one ever heard anything about
the woman or her foot.
A few times I found
myself on the same car as an older man who seemed to be
talking on the phone. With earpieces these days, you
never know whether or not someone is talking to himself
or has a person at the end of the line. Well this guy is
talking in a normal voice, and not too long, and to the
annoyance of most of us around him, he begins to talk in
vulgarities. His talk would make a drill instructor
blush. And you can see the people around him don't know
what to make of him. Is he on the phone to a 900-number
or what? So he goes on for a while and nobody says
anything to him. But you could see people are
embarrassed by his talk. They try to move away from him.
I haven't seen him in a while, but I could simply be on
a later PATH car than he rides regularly. Entire contents Copyright © 2005-2007 By Anthony Buccino.All rights reserved.Permissions & other snail mail: PO Box 110252 Nutley NJ 07110
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