The Wheels on the Bus in California

Mirage Travel Writing Podcast

Multiple times a day, on a whim or by demand, I sing my son the song The Wheels on the Bus. He's just turned two and loves repetition. He watches my lips as I describe the movements of wheels, wipers, and the driver as the driver says move on back. All over an idealized town, this bus drives over a dozen times a day.

At any time of the day, I can receive, via a social media group chat, stories from a good friend, a public bus driver in San Diego, California.

Albert was precocious. His taste in punk, at the age of 16, was more studied. He smoked cigarettes like a veteran, while my head spun.

He got a degree in history, later lived in a Civil War-era cottage in rural Missouri, then moved to southern California.

When you're in your teens you make friends that last a lifetime, and within those groups there is usually one legend. Albert is that legend, the most sincere, he's never not been himself.

Slow-moving, he has learned to accept the world.

Which makes him an ideal bus driver. He drives through a country in decline, turns in his daily logs, then sends a message to a group chat, to our group of friends, five guys from Midwestern America.

Here are the stories, they are diametrically opposed to the songs I sing to my son, and it makes me think about how great we were told things were as a child, and then how we spend the rest of our adult life driving through the absurdity, never to reconcile the two, other than in hope, fantasy, or delusion.

Like Joan Didion once wrote, we all tell ourselves stories in order to live. And this is his story.

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If you enjoy what you're listening to but would rather hold these stories in your hand, say while riding on public transport to mom's house or to the mirage of self-actualization through travel, you can buy a book or two at miragetravelpodcast.com