Get on the Bus

By Randy Horick, Walter Jowers, Matt Pulle, Grace Renshaw, Jim Ridley & Adam Ross

Cocooned in their cars, commuters choose their own company: friends, co-workers, the radio. Bus riders have to take what comes. The bus is like a bar. It is a community of strangers that can be as lively as a football crowd and as lonely as the last person in the corner at last call. That some never look fellow riders in the eye makes them no less a community. That some riders see each other every day and know each other by sight, name or even by stop, makes them no less strangers. The bus may be the only place they come in contact with each other.

The bus in Nashville is several communities, really. They are figuratively parallel and literally moving in tangents to each other, physically intersecting at one downtown point only.

We decided to explore.

On a series of days this November, several Scene writers and photographers got on the buses around Nashville. We rode where the routes and the day took us. We learned a lot about the difficulties of getting around the city without an automobile. We saw a snapshot of a community that many Nashvillians glimpse only in passing. And we met some interesting people along the way.

The “redheaded amazon bitch”

No one meets my eyes when I get on the #7, heading downtown after dark. The bus is largely vacant, and so are the expressions on the riders’ faces. They’re trance-like, except for the four boys near the back, who carry on a lively banter as they create four piles of dollar bills, as if engaged in an impromptu three-card monte game.

“I can’t believe you ate five hamburgers today,” one boy says to the largest in their group.

“I didn’t eat five.”

“And chili cheese fries!” another chimes in.

“I had just two.”

The money, it turns out, is not part of a game but an adventure. Taking advantage of a school holiday, Anthony, Tyree, Michael and William have been selling candy door-to-door in Belle Meade to raise money to attend summer camp in North Carolina. They plan to go together as part of the Jesus Holy Temple Youth Group.

All four are between seventh and ninth grade and grew up together near the Preston Taylor Homes. Michael and William are first cousins. None had ever been to Belle Meade before.

The boys walked mostly along the side streets, a little awed by the mansions and manicured lawns. “Some people were real nice,” William says. “One man got real mad. He yelled, 'Go away, kid!’ ”

The boys seem equally wide-eyed to learn their names might appear in a newspaper. For them, that would be another first. “Where do you print them?” Anthony asks. “Are you writing the story now? Could I write a story for the paper?”

When we reach downtown, the boys put away their money. They netted over $100, they say. All their peanut M&Ms are gone. The last I see them, they’re together on a bench, waiting for another bus, still celebrating the day’s windfall.

The boisterous boys are an exception. Night riders are different, explains Bill, who drives an evening route along Nolensville Road. They’re quiet. Everything’s less hurried. That’s why Bill likes it. “The passengers are more relaxed at night,” he says. “If I get caught in traffic and they’re a few minutes late, they don’t yell at me.”

Bill drives from 4 to midnight Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 to 11 p.m. on Saturdays. He runs from one route to the next—Donelson, Nolensville, Bordeaux, Meridian Street—then starts over again. When we reach Haywood Lane, Bill turns left, then down an alley, then back on Nolensville toward downtown. “See you tomorrow,” he says as he lets a woman off the bus. “You get to know a lot of the regulars,” he says. “I knew she was going to this side [of Nolensville], so I brought her back around where she wouldn’t have to cross the busy road.”

As that woman exits, another enters—a tall, 50-ish lady with auburn hair who greets me with a “hello” that sounds friendly and exhausted all at once. She has just finished her shift as a stylist at a salon near Elysian Fields. She says she’s headed to North Sacramento.

“North Nashville, I mean. I’m just tired.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head, as if scolding herself. “I’m originally from California.”

When asked what brought her to Nashville, she doesn’t miss a beat.

“Stupidity.”

Then she explains. “I had it rough since I been here. I had one of those Jerry Springer stories. I was married for 20 years,” she says. “I had my own hair salon in Santa Clara.” Then she fell for a man from Nashville—Tony. “I followed him here to get married,” she says, shaking her head again.