My Time Behind the Wheel

In the fall of my freshman year of college I had a job checking student IDs at Boyden Gymnasium.  The job stunk, didn't really allow me time to study, and barely paid enough to be worth the time. I don't even think it paid more than $4/hr.  It wasn't long before I realized that there had to be a campus job out there that was more commensurate with my unique character and talents, something that permitted more individuality and freedom.

In the winter of 1987-88, I trained to drive a bus. A big bus.  I learned about the opportunity from my soft spoken crew coach.  As a novice oarsman on the UMass Crew Team that fall I grew enamored of our quirky and handsome coach.  He drove an old hearse that he'd retooled to have a pick up bed; it looked not dissimilar to the Eat Me car from Animal House.

He also parked an old ambulance in his yard (think Ghostbusters).  He had a beautiful girlfriend, owned an off campus house filled with 5th year seniors (that to me, a 17-year old freshman, seemed like some kind of Shangri-La). And despite my skinny frame and poor rowing talent, he treated my kindly.  The guy was cool and I wanted to be like him.  He also drove a bus for the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA).  During winter session that year, he told me that PVTA would pay me to learn how to drive a bus, help me get a Commercial Driver's License (CDL) with a passenger endorsement, and that the job paid close to $10/hr.  (He did not tell me, however, that with that license, I'd be drafted to drive the Crew Bus - more on that later.)

By the spring of 1988, I had a CDL and while just 18 years old was yet licensed to drive any single vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 26,001 or more pounds (11,793 kg), or any such vehicle towing a vehicle not in excess of 10,000 pounds (4536 kg) GVWR.  This was, by far, the most powerful I'd ever felt in my entire life.  PVTA operated (and does still) busses and routes throughout Western Massachusetts including the University of Massachusetts Transit system as well as lines that service the 5 colleges of the area (Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire, Amherst, and UMass) and surrounding communities.  I drove several routes each week.  The campus routes were the dullest, driving endless loops, picking up wise ass (or drunk) kids too lazy to walk the 1/4 of a mile from class to class or party to party.  I much preferred the town loops or the routes from one college campus to another.  I had a late night route to Mt. Holyoke College where light traffic allowed for a long layover at their student center.  I'd park the bus, leaving the front and rear doors open for passengers to board before our scheduled departure.  I'd wander into the student center, admiring the finer accoutrements of the private all women's college, vastly more refined than that of my sprawling state school.  I only had ten minutes or so to kill and soon it was time to return to the bus.

Because there was no uniform for PVTA drivers, there was nothing to distinguish me from any other passenger.  To amuse myself I'd board the bus like the other passengers, through the open rear doors.  I'd take a seat in the middle of the bus, and grab one of the many discarded school newspapers scattered on the seats.  As the scheduled departure time neared, I surreptitiously watched as the passengers began to look at their watches and wonder where the driver was.  I'd wait until a few minutes past departure time and enjoy the looks of frustration as passengers began to squirm in their seats, impatient and miffed.  At last, I'd dramatically and noisily rise from my seat, make a show of throwing my newspaper on my seat in indignant ire and march purposely toward the front of the bus.  I lingered before the driver's chair and made like I was surveying the complicated cockpit - the ignition button, the steering wheel, the gear shifter, the air brake.  I then plunged into the seat, snapped my seatbelt, started the bus, closed the door, dropped the bus into drive and punched the accelerator.  I relished looking in the rearview mirror at the unsure faces of the dozen or so riders as they tried to figure out if I was really the driver or just a vigil ante commandeering the vehicle.  In the many times I executed this performance, never once did anyone ever say so much as a word.

I eventually quit the PVTA in the fall of my senior year.  It wasn't the monotony of the routes or the annoying drunks.  It was the combination of being a full time rower, fraternity carouser, student, and social animal.  It all finally caught up to me after a late night drive on a dark stretch of country road.  I started to fall asleep at the wheel and woke only due to the vibration in the steering wheel and sound of rocks and pebbles from the shoulder being shot up on the underside of the bus.  My heart raced as I eased the wheel back toward my lane.  I looked in the rearview mirror, but none of the passengers seemed to realize what had nearly happened. The adrenalin pumped through me all the way back to the garage and I gave my notice not long after.

The other bus I drove while a student at UMass was a used school bus, owned and operated by the UMass Crew Club.  It was painted maroon, rattled loudly, and was used to bring rowers back and forth from campus to the river - a 15 or 20 minute drive from Amherst to the Hadley/Northhampton divide through which the Connecticut River flows.

The main route to the river was along Route 9, but traffic was thick and there were back roads, windy and narrow country roads, that often allowed for faster travel and were definitely more fun to drive.  Crew practice began at 4 o'clock and my role was to make my way from central campus down to the distant satellite parking area to fetch the bus, drive it up to Totman Gym and pick up rowers.  Practice ran a couple of hours and by the time the rowing shells were back in the racks, oars replaced, and the boathouse doors were closing, there was often just a handful of minutes to get back to campus before the dining commons closed for dinner.  I can't count the times I peeled out of the boathouse Dukes of Hazzard style with student athletes barely up the stairs, the doors not even closed in an effort to haul ass back to campus.

I had 30+ hungry athletes counting on me to get them to the dining hall before the doors locked.  After crossing the bridge on Rt. 9 from Northhampton to Hadley, I'd cut down a dirt path, through a corn field, kicking up a dust storm, hitting ruts in the road at 40 miles per hour and sending kids in the rear seats up the roof.  Once on the paved road I'd go faster, feeling as if the bus were up off its wheels as I hugged the corners tight.  Tree limbs would snap loudly against the open bus windows, sometimes wresting the smaller branches and from the trees.  Tree debris would fly into the bus and cause people to duck for cover.  Half the bus was cheered me on and the other half cowered in fear.  It was not unusual to hear screams.

More often than not I'd get to campus on time, stopping in front of nearest dining hall.  The sweaty rowers would leap off the high front steps and jump out the rear fire exit door.  They'd charge up the hill to the commons, shouting, "Thanks, Dave!" as they fled.  Sometimes I could park the bus nearby and join them to eat myself, other times there was enough time to park down at the satellite lot and hoof it back to another dining hall, but often it was too late and I had to scavenge a dinner on my own.

My CDL permitted me to land a couple of above average paying summer jobs. After my freshman year I got a job at a moving company.  I didn't often have to drive the moving truck but did have occasion to from time to time.  More often, I was just another grunt, humping furniture up 4 flights of stairs.  The moving company was a small one based out of Belmont, MA.  I lived in Cambridge at the time and had to take to take the T and a bus and then walk another 15 minutes to get to the lot where the trucks were parked.  The movers were rough around the edges.  One was an ex-con on parole and another, a raging alcoholic.  His talents were expertly packing the truck and also making a liquor store our FIRST stop on the way to jobs in the morning.  By the end of the two months I worked there, I knew the location and store hours of every liquor store within a 3 mile radius of the truck yard.  The owner knew the predilictions of his employees and only gave us our paychecks after the banks had closed so that his workers couldn't cash their checks that night, go on a bender, and miss work the next day.  By mid-August, I faked a back injury and spent the rest of the that summer making sandwiches in Harvard Sq.

The summer after I my sophomore year I leveraged my CDL to get a job at Northhampton Lumber.  Instead of passengers, I now carried 2x4s and other building supplies on the bed of a 24 foot flat bed truck.  I enjoyed using the hydraulic lift on the truck bed to dump lumber on job sites.  I was still a skinny 19 year old, but driving that truck full of wood made me feel older, stronger, and more blue collar than I really was.  That truth was later born out later that summer when a fork lift accident dumped three stacks of 1' x 6' x 20' cedar decking on me, breaking my left humerus bone in half and requiring 20 stitches in my right hand.  That was the end of my lumber career.  And of summer jobs requiring a CDL.  It wasn't, however, the end of my driving career.

After graduating college and being turned out into an abysmal job market, I eventually landed a job in Boston at Old Town Trolley.  I had worked for them the summer after my junior year at an information booth in Faneuil Hall Marketplace, but to drive a trolley one had to be 21.  The job paid well for the times.  I made cash tips, got to drive a cool trolley bus, wear a headset microphone, and entertained visitors from the world over as I drove around Boston's many fine historical, architectural, and inviting attractions.  There's not enough time in this entry to recount the richness of my Old Town Trolley experiences (lasting several seasons); I'll reveal more in future writings.  What I will say is this:  if missing a few dining hall meals, nearly driving off the road in the dead of night, breaking my arm, and moving cat hair covered couches was the price I had to pay to eventually become a tour conductor, I'd happily do it all over again.

I toured literally thousands of guests around Boston (and later Key West).  I impressed them with both my knowledge of of the city as well as my ability to thread a trolley through double parked cars on Newbury Street.  I charmed them from their dollars and received promises of marriage to their granddaughters.  More than once I was offered Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  The riders were putty in my hands; I could easily persuade a trolley full of riders to yell out the windows and harass my unsuspecting friends as they walked along Boston's streets.  Many of my co-workers from that era are still my best friends today, some 17 years later.  We reminisce about the unparalleled fun we had at that job and wonder why work can't be as much fun anymore.  We selectively omit the innane questions, cheap riders, itchy polyester uniforms, back to back to back tours, hoarse voices, bursting bladders, fascist overlord bosses, and diesel soot.  The monotony eventually got to most of us.  I left the trolleys in 1994 to go to graduate school and a few years later my CDL expired for good.

I sometimes miss sitting high above the other cars in a hydraulic captain's chair.  I miss the oversized steering wheel and making wide, sweeping turns.  I miss the giant side view mirrors and the hiss of the air brake.  But probably what I miss most is my captive audience.