It was a Friday morning, and with my
Civil War class cancelled, it was a perfectly good morning to
pick up a
Tom's Creek A A-shift and make a few extra
bucks for my upcoming
UK trip.
Most of my shift was rather uneventful; Friday class attendance is lower than
the other four days of the school week anyway, given that VT
business students can very easily avoid having any Friday classes as juniors
and seniors. Since it was the end of the semester, people were even less
interested than usual in coming to classes they did have, which made my
passenger count rather low. The last loop got rather heavy, though, so people
had to sit whereever a seat was available.
Two obvious sorority types got on the bus somewhere around Chasewood, sitting
near the front. A few minutes down UCB, the legendary Jerry boarded the
bus. Jerry is an older guy who apparently was once an upstanding citizen of
Blacksburg; lawyer or some other such profession, strong civic booster, the
works. Something snapped several years ago, though, and now Jerry spends most
of his time riding Blacksburg Transit, mumbling or talking loudly to himself or
anyone around him, occasionally making fun of people, threatening bus drivers
with stories of how Vietnam vets with no legs and no eyes are going to come
and kill them, etc. Every so often, he'll break into a loud, long, obnoxious
laugh, and if you didn't feel sorry for him (since he obviously ain't right),
you'd likely kill him upon hearing it.
Well, Jerry was feeling sociable that day, so he decided to talk to his
seatmates, the sorority girls. Even worse for them, they tried to engage him
in conversation, never having encountered him before and not knowing that this
was a Bad Idea. (The bus driver, on the other hand, was trying
very hard not to laugh out loud at the results of this.) The main point
of Jerry's lecture for the day was hot
sauce -- Jerry prefers Texas Pete hot sauce over any other brand he's
tried, all of which he listed in detail. He recommended hot sauce recipes
with brown rice and green peppers, but he lost his train of thought after
that and didn't extend on this statement. Meanwhile, the sorority sisters' minds were obviously blown by this speech -- I don't know what was funnier, his screed or their reactions to it.
As we pulled up to Newman Library, Jerry had a question for me.
J: "This bus doesn't go to Burruss, does it?"
VT_h: "No, sir, it just goes to the Library."
J: "Ah well. There's an old saying in baseball..."
Unfortunately, he just started mumbling to himself, then got off the bus
before he could enlighten me on the old baseball saying about the TCA bus
going to the library rather than Burruss. I was quite disappointed.
Get back on the bus...