When I was 17 years old, I would walk from my Brookhill Road home a short block to Reisterstown Road at the Plaza and take the No. 7 bus downtown to my summer job.
The bus traveled along Reisterstown Road south by the Druid Hill section onto Pennsylvania Avenue and into town. I’d get off the bus somewhere around Charles Center and walk the three blocks to the night club where I worked. Yes, night clubs do have day shifts.
Here’s what I saw along the way.
When my voyage started, the bus would go from majority white passengers and would become majority black passengers by the time we hit Belvedere.
The bus passed places that are almost legend-like in terms of the old Jewish neighborhood.
But this wasn’t so old. It was 1970-71, two years after the race riots and a great deal of the city had been given up for dead by white people.
Along the way on Pennsylvania Avenue, even in the morning, it wasn’t difficult to pick out people with a number of deep bruises over arms and legs. These were drug addicts, pure and simple. Some of them walked around with children. Many of them were black, but many of them were white.
In the evening coming home, the bus was occupied mostly by many tired, hard working people who worked low-paying jobs in office buildings and hospitals. A couple of times I remember kids literally grabbing free rides on the back bumper of the bus or sneaking in through the back entrance.
But never, ever, ever was I singled out for being white. I sat in the front of the bus, the middle of the bus and the rear of the bus. I sat next to black people, brown people and white people. I wore an Orioles baseball hat each day, that’s just what I chose to wear. Sometimes familiar faces would call “Mr. Oriole.” Never did anyone say, Mr. white Oriole or Mr. Jewish Oriole.
On one ride home early one evening, a little boy asked his mother if he could sit next to me. The other guys on the bus who were regulars joked with me that I was his father.
That was the extent of everything. I shared my Fritos with the little boy, let him wear my O’s hat and sat on the bus until it was time to go home.
I write this because it saddens me about the violence that’s recently occurred on MTA busses in Baltimore. Riding the number seven was an important part of the fabric of my upbringing.
I had a friend whose name was “Woo.” He worked with me at the club. He was a work friend. He chided me once for sitting “too” far back on the bus. Back then we knew how to take busses to Memorial Stadium, the Civic Center, Edmonson Village. It was no badge of honor, it’s just what we did.
The bus was and still is the workhorse of urban life. Now we have the subway and Light Rail, but I’ll never forget the days of those summers. And I hope that the violence was just a scattered event. With gas prices the way they are, everyone should be able to get around the city, no matter what race or culture.
It’s a shame that fear us something we have to discuss about a busride.