I now enjoy riding the bus. For the last eight years one of my most consistent clients has been the City of St. Paul. Its offices are located in the downtown area about five miles from my home. For eight years I have driven my car downtown, fought traffic going and coming, searched for places in the parking garage, and paid three to five dollars for the privilege of leaving my car where rust can consume and thieves break in. During this period, my wife, Edith, has consistently pressured me to ride the bus.

But I have not. It was a small thing that prevented me and that is that I hate to carry change. I also hate to stand by a fare box thumbing through my change for the right amount while everyone waits for me. The other day I added another downtown client to my list. While I was strolling from the ramp to their offices I passed the Transit Commission’s downtown sales office and mentioned to them my problem with change. They, of course, sold me a couple of punch tickets that would free me from my concerns. So now I am riding the bus. And enjoying myself ever so much.

I like to ride the bus because I am reminded as I climb on that I am just people. I spend much of my life with super-people, the kind that climb on jet airplanes and vacation in the Cayman Islands, and know the name of a superb little hotel in Paris, where one will really not be bothered with all the tourist trivia. I spend much of my time with super-people but I am not a super-person, and as I climb on the bus the sense of comfort that I experience as I look around reminds me that these are my people, this is the class from which I came, and it is the class that I have never really left.

Indeed, all of us suited in blue for business, simply blend into the crowd of work shirts, old lady dresses, scrub woman uniforms, greaseball overalls, practical nurse whites, and high school gang colors. It is as if to say that we are all really just folks from the Grand Avenue neighborhood who are about to enter our daily masquerade as somebody else. But before we pretend that we are different we will hold one last communion service, riding this bus shoulder to shoulder to our appointed roles in the drama of the next eight hours.

Yesterday, somewhere around Grand and Victoria, a very old lady climbed aboard the bus with great difficulty. She was slow. She was fragile. The driver waited impassively, foot on the brake, face smooth in oriental calm. She showed him her pass and asked if it was still valid.

By now, for those of us with quicker feet he would have been speaking over his shoulder as he pulled away from the curb, but for her, schedule forgotten, he held his foot to the brake and explained that the pass was out of date, removed it to the wastebasket to his left and suggested that she be seated while she sought out the correct change. She sat down across the aisle, and as she began to dig in her purse he moved the bus back into the traffic stream.

She stretched out her arm with a palm full of change and he reached back, took it, studied it, announced that it was too little, and placed it in the fare box. He explained: "Rush hour fare. Another quarter, please."

"What did you say? " was her response.

"One dollar and ten cents, please."

I could see this coming. He wanted a quarter. She did not hear well. He had accented the words "ten cents" and as could be expected she dug back into her purse and carefully retrieved and passed to him, not a quarter, but one thin dime.

He studied it judiciously. He put it in the fare box. He drove on.

I like to ride the bus.

The author of this essay is John Cowan. He has written two books of similar essays: Small Decencies and The Common Table Each is approximately 160 pages in paperback. To purchase either book by mail send a check for $10 per book to him at 1498 Goodrich, St. Paul, MN 55105. Price will be negotiated for any order over 20 books. If you wish to discuss consulting or speaking engagements or attendance at a workshop he may be reached by e-mail. His address is Johnedie@aol.com

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