Waiting at the Greyhound station

In the past, Greyhound stations were a mess come boarding time. People clustered around the admitting entrances forming lines within lines, a maze of dazed and irritable travelers. Everyone would wait in the seats along the edge of the station until enough people had formed a line at the admitting booth—usually after five or six people had stood up and staked out their position with a phalanx of luggage, the rest of the passengers would flood in, leading to a crushed, deformed line.

Even worse, the lines for the other bus routes would start to blend with your own, making such a mess of things that you would wonder if you were actually boarding the right bus. The secret terror of this moment was not the chaos or the crowds, but the dreadful possibility that you might find yourself stuck somewhere in a town so little known that even the residents don’t know where it is (perhaps they too boarded the wrong bus).

Now, as a result of heightened security measures, we have to form lines. The station security officers scan us for metal and search our carry-on luggage for shampoo, and in order to do this, we must be neatly ordered in rows. The advantage of this new method—aside from staving off the boarding-time panic attacks that I had come to believe were just a natural part of the system—is that instead of nervously watching for people butting in line and making sure I’m not accidentally going to Manitoba, I can actually take in the varied and strange characters that so vitally enrich the Greyhound experience. The following is an example of one such notable person encountered during my last trip:

A man and his young son pull up to the back of a line running parallel to my own, just a couple of feet away from myself. The boy seems to be four or five, the man probably no older than his early 30s. Trying to kill some time and ease his son’s restlessness, the father asks the boy, “Want to dance?” The son nods and so the father pulls out his cell phone, which plays the unmistakable opening chords of AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” The boy stomps along to the music and we all laugh at this four-year-old thrashing along to the song. He begins stomping on father’s feet and the man chastises him, saying, “Hey, don’t dirty daddy’s shoes—I cleaned them for baba, okay?” After the song stops (only the opening portion plays), the man puts his phone away and sighs wistfully, “They just don’t make them like this anymore.”

Another man gets into line behind them and drops his three bags on the floor. He looks at the father’s luggage and realizes that he has forgotten his own tags. “Where do you get those?” he asks, and the father points to the ticket counter, where a long line of fidgeting passengers waits, immobile and anxious. The man picks up his luggage, sighs and trudges off to stand in another line. “I hear you,” the father says as the man walks away, not even listening. “Next time, I’ll pack everything into one bag, right, Jake?” His son looks blankly at him.

“Next time?” he corrects himself. “There won’t be a next time. Never again.” The man with the luggage is long since out of earshot, but the father continues speaking, either to no one or everyone. “Man, losing your license sucks. It’s almost as bad as getting your balls chopped off. No—worse.”

Another man chimes in with a supportive “yeah,” which encourages the father to continue. “One time, one time—and you lose your license. I had two beers, and then as we’re leaving my buddy leaves behind a full beer on the table. I’m like, ‘That’s four bucks! Are you crazy?’ So I down it, and of course there’s a check stop right outside. Two minutes after I leave, and I’m just over the limit. Just barely.”

He shakes his head ruefully as a new passenger comes to stand behind him in the line. This man wears a hoodie and has sideburns that end somewhere just below his jaw line. Distracted by this sight, the father looks over the man approvingly and declares, “Buddy, those are the best sideburns I’ve ever seen. How long did that take you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They used to be bigger, but I shaved them for work,” the man says diffidently, a little embarrassed but still amiable.

“Ho-lee shit,” the father drawls in amazement. The man with the sideburns laughs at this, but noiselessly, repressing the sound so that it stays in his belly and causes his whole body to shake. The father glances down at his son, who is crouching, tired from standing so long in line. “Hey, Jake,” the father says sternly. “Stand up like a man.”

The boy solemnly pulls himself up to his full height. “That’s a good boy,” the father says, putting his hand on his son's head. “Daddy loves you. Be good.”