Rochester buses, part 2.
So here I am, 20 years old, living in Rochester NY without a car. I earn a living, if you want to call it that, by washing dishes in a club on the other side of town. This means a lot of time spent on a bus.

Sadly, the buses don't run all night, they only run until about 1:00 am.

So here I am, working the evening shift one night, trying to get out of there before midnight so I can get home by bus. As luck has it, I miss the one I'm trying to get, but there's another one running about 20 minutes later. I catch that one from the club to the downtown exchange spot, but too late- they're only dropping off now, and I'm still five miles from home.

For those not familiar with Rochester NY, it's fairly far north and gets massive amounts of snow due to the Great Lakes just to the west. Blizzards are a common occurrence, as is a cold rain that drills right through you when the wind blows. In addition, at this point (1983) downtown Rochester was really not someplace you wanted to be late at night, especially in the area I had to walk through- namely, Aurthur Shawcross's favorite hunting grounds. (In fact, I'm pretty sure I served him food back in those days- but that's another story.)

So here I am, walking along at about 1:30 in the morning past the dives that are still open, when I encounter a woman standing outside, shivering in the sub-freezing wind. I look over at her as I pass. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

"Working," she responds through chattering teeth.

"Oh."

She looks hopefully at me. "Got any money?"

"Only bus fare. I'm a dishwasher."

She turns away, shivering, and I step up my pace. Low as I might be, cold and tired, broke and walking five miles back to my squalid apartment, I can console myself that at least I'm not her...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 29 May 2008, 18:08, Reply)