The Bus Chronicles - 2008-02-18
I ride a Chicago bus most days to and from work. Occasionally I witness some interesting events. I’m going to try out logging them here.
The wind and snow were pretty bad around 7 PM CST tonight. A woman, appearing of middle age, walked through the rear door of the bus. She would have been considered ugly by many standards of beauty, and whenever she talked, horrendous halitosis hit everyone in a 15-foot arc.
And she talked a lot. She talked loudly. She kept mentioning Chicago and Cicero; I guess that was her final destination. And in between mentions of that intersection, she would talk about something else.
Chicago buses have an automated system to aurally and visually announce the next stop. This woman would curse every announcement, say something that I couldn’t understand, and then very loudly say “CHICAGO AND CICERO”.
There seems to be an unspoken rule (pun intended) that you don’t speak to strangers on a bus. So she was talking, cursing, shouting at nothing. Talking to herself, really. This went on for about 20 minutes.
Two young women in the seat in front of me asked her where she was trying to go; the old woman become really mad at that. She shouted something that I can’t recall and then left the bus at the Chicago and Damen stop.
Chicago and Damen to Chicago and Cicero isn’t really a short walk.
The episode, though brief, was bewildering — and sad. As I mentioned, it was pretty cold out there. When I got off the bus, the snow was falling fast and the wind was extremely strong. As of about midnight, 2/18, it is about 22 degrees Fahrenheit (-5 degrees C); wind chill makes it feel around 3 degrees F (-16 degrees C).
The old woman may or may not have been a vagrant. Her appearance and odor definitely fit the description, but I find it hard to tell someone’s socioeconomic status from those sorts of clues. I don’t know where she went. Chicago and Damen is in a very yuppie place, and if she’s in need of shelter I don’t know if she’ll get it around there.
Her physical unpleasantness and idiosyncracies aside, I hope she’s alright and out of the cold.