Posted: Thursday, May 4, 2006 7:00 pm
In the six months ending in February, Lincoln's city bus service recorded more than a million single passenger trips. Meet the students, the seniors, the single mothers who get around town without paying for gas.
By COLLEEN KENNEY | Lincoln Journal Star
The people on the bus go …
To work downtown.
Mike Greene is a 40-year-old computer programmer. He lives above a hair studio in Havelock, right on the bus route.
He has no car. He was waiting for “a deal of a lifetime,” a car from a little old lady who barely drove it. A car with good gas mileage.
“I won’t buy one now,” he says. “Not with gas prices like this.”
He untangles his MP3 player — reggae — and opens his book.
Amy Combs gets on.
To the university.
Amy is skinny and cute. She’s 21. She shows her student I.D. and bus pass and she sits toward the front.
The music education major keeps her bass at school. Because the thing’s so big, she has to have a big car, a ’94 Ford Explorer that gets just 13 miles a gallon.
She spent $35 or $40 the other day filling it. And that was from a quarter tank.
She rarely visits her parents in Omaha now. She and her fiancé canceled plans to drive to Estes Park for Memorial Day.
She’s been riding the bus a long time, mainly because parking at campus is so bad. The bus is free for university students.
“There’s some weird people. Over time, you get a feeling who to sit by and who to avoid.”
A woman sits down across the aisle. They smile at each other.
The woman holds a baby boy and a big, folded stroller. Her little girl, who has brown curls and strawberry shorts, climbs into the seat and looks out the window.
To the children’s section of the library and the park and the plasma center at 17th and M.
The woman, Cecile Huffman, is thinking about all the things they will do downtown until they take the bus home around 3 o’clock.
“Mommy! We went to the movie there. Narnia!”
The bus is downtown now, driving past Starship 9, the discount theater. Cecile’s 4-year-old daughter pushes her face to the window. When she turns back to Mommy, her face is solemn.
“The White Witch is sooo mean.”
“Yes, Lindsey. She is mean. She scared all of us in the theater.”
A friend who’s meeting them downtown will watch the children when she goes to donate plasma.
The baby on the bus goes “La la la.”
Tyler is a year and a half, Cecile says. He likes the rattling and humming and all the people on the bus.
To work at the university, a half-hour late.
Lisa Wood, 41, combs her long hair. She applies Cover Girl mascara and eye shadow as she looks in a small mirror.
This bus shakes, but her hand is steady.
She’s a banker for student organizations at UNL, a regular bus rider for years. That’s why she’s so good at this with her hands.
She’s late. The bus blew an air bag on a brake, and a new bus had to be sent.
Lisa has a disease in her joints that makes it hard to drive. Usually, you just get it in one joint. But she has it in both knees and ankles and hips. For the past year and a half, she’s been in pain.
“You can only cry about it so long, then you got to just go on and do the best you can.”
To get a haircut downtown at the College of Hair Design and to read the newspapers at the library.
“I go there to read about the government scandals,” says 68-year-old Keith Hastings. He wears blue suspenders and a ballcap with faded words.
He used to drive trucks. He can’t anymore, not for a long time. About 20 years ago, he had five strokes in four hours. It took him years with his wife’s help to even walk around the block. She died in ’94.
He rides the bus downtown most days from his home just east of the Capitol.
He likes going downtown because he meets people. A few minutes ago, he was sitting in the downtown bus shelter next to a nice man who said he was Jesus.
“I can’t afford a car anyway,” Keith says. “Unless I can find a woman with a lot of money.”
He gets off this bus near 18th and G and says to the driver, “See you later.”
To the university, from the mall.
Two young women talk in a foreign language as they sort through big plastic bags, pulling out and inspecting Husker sweatshirts, Husker T-shirts and Husker mint-chocolate candy bars wrapped in Husker paper. The paper has a map of Nebraska.
They are from the Czech Republic, they explain in good English.
Ilona Kohlerova and Martina Fialova, 23-year-old exchange students. Ilona studies sociology, Martina law.
Martina takes the bus almost every day from City Campus to East Campus. Otherwise, the two usually take it only to the mall and back.
Public transportation isn’t so good here, they say, not like in Europe. Buses here don’t run at night or on Sundays. It’s not convenient.
“Here,” Martina says, “we usually just see poor people and students.”
Even now with the gas prices, which are a lot less than in Europe.
Three girls get on at the stop near Arts and Humanities high school. They walk past the Czech students and sit in the back row.
To visit Mom’s work after school.
They giggle about how silly a kid looked belly dancing at school.
“It just looked weird.”
One of the girls, Mattie Simbarcelos, looks at her friend near the window. She sees drool.
“Quit slobbering. It’s coming out the sides of your mouth.”
The other girl says she can’t help it, it always does that.
They giggle.
Mattie, a 10th-grader, likes to ride with her friends. She doesn’t like to ride alone because guys hit on her.
It’s just a way home, she says. Better than walking.
Mattie gets off downtown and waits for another bus to go visit her mom.
Home.
Anita Jenson says she can’t work because a man she loved beat her up so bad it ruined her shoulder.
He hit her right here, she says, across the front of the neck.
Then another man beat her up. And another. And another just last week, some man who wants to be her boyfriend.
“They say men like that are magnets at finding women like me. Because I’m certainly not looking for them.
“I guess I just wear a sign across my head: ABUSE ME.”
Her voice is soft. Her blond hair is pulled back in a scrunchie. She looks like any middle-class 49-year-old mom in sunglasses and Capri pants, except moms like that don’t have round pink scars on their arms from donating plasma.
She takes the bus to donate plasma. She donates twice a week, getting $15 the first time and $27 the second time. She’s saving up to fix her car. The fuel pump in her ’91 Dodge Spirit broke a year ago.
Low-income people like her, she says, can’t afford to drive now anyway, even the ones who have cars.
Her life has been bumpy, she says, but it’s been good, too. She’s happy. She’s no longer homeless — “couch surfing.”
“I have hope. I have hope that everything’s going to get better one day. That’s what keeps me going. There are many people in Africa who have it much worse.”
There’s an old lady she likes to sit with on the bus. The lady told her about all the bad things that have happened in her life, all the sadness and deaths in her family. But she always seems so cheerful.
“Sometimes you meet some interesting people.”
She pulls a gray string by the window and a bell sounds. She thanks the driver and gets off at 48th and Cleveland, and the bus moves on.
All through the town.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.