A 60-cent adventure

Riding the bus

The smallish blue passenger bus rolled to a stop beside Flippo's Senior Social Center in Johnson.

Two of us climbed inside, and for $1.20 we each had senior tickets to ride for the next 50 minutes.

Pat Flippo and I quickly plopped into front seats across the aisle from each other and met the congenial veteran driver, Lois Keefer. "Welcome aboard," she said with a smile.

Clad in a bright yellow safety vest, she told us she'd started driving for Ozark Regional Transit last summer after 17 challenging years of operating school buses for a Bentonville junior high (give her a Bronze Star).

Thus our quasi-adventure began to unfold at 8 a.m. For the next 50 minutes Keefer guided us past subdivisions and businesses in Springdale and Johnson, making one designated stop after another, usually to no one waiting.

We eventually would ride her Bus 63 in a full circle of its route back to the stop where we'd boarded.

After not being aboard a public bus for years, I'd become intent today on reliving the experience of public transportation.

As the three of us motored along against the drone of gently chattering engine valves, the 57-year-old Keefer said she has three grown children and seven grandchildren.

We motored past Tyson's complex in Springdale and turned in to a neighborhood where a woman who appeared to be in her early 70s climbed on board saying, "Merry Christmas!" We greeted her as she sat down and on Keefer drove on the surface streets until a second lady of about the same age also climbed aboard.

And here we four sat, smiling in the same metal compartment in the week before Christmas.

I'd forgotten just how peaceful it can be to sit and watch the world pass by as someone else does the driving.

Plus it was interesting to see the twists, turns and stops this route was taking. But then, it wouldn't have been an adventure if we already knew where we were headed, now, would it?

We passed one gas station where the neon sign read $2.19 for regular. As I glanced over, the price on the sign dropped to $2.17 right before my eyes.

What's that they say about one person's good being another's bad? Good for us drivers. Not so good for the stock market.

The focus point for our Bus 63 and others in the area turned out to the Wal-Mart stop in Springdale. Two other buses running different routes were ahead of us, including Ozark Regional Transit's pink version. Keefer said it's been commercially wrapped as an advertisement to help the oft-financially beleaguered nonprofit transit system offset some expenses.

Our two lady passengers left the bus here to more "Merry Christmases," and on Keefer drove, the three of us in turns and circles across the streets of Springdale.

She told us drivers are paid by the hour and she puts in a full schedule even when she's not behind the wheel on a morning or afternoon schedule. "I am back at the office waiting to fill in if another driver calls in sick or otherwise," she said.

To kill some time, I asked Pat for his best Christmas story at his privately operated senior social day-care center for those with cognitive impairments. I needed to get myself in the Christmas spirit.

Without hesitating, he told of the 90-year-old woman named Fran Bohe who, with her daughter, recently paid an impromptu visit from her Minneapolis home to his center, which was previously a home along Wilkerson Street.

Her unexpected visit mattered because the cottage-like house had been her family home where she and her six siblings were raised.

"Fran came in and you could see the memories and amazement unfold in her eyes as she took it all in. Nothing about the layout or a lot of the interior had changed since her childhood. And she rounded the kitchen corner, she gasped when she saw that we'd kept three original older photographs of her and her sisters and parents hanging on one wall."

He told me one of Fran's sisters had brought the pictures to the center a few years back and Pat had mounted them on the wall in honor of the family.

"I'd call that a gift to a lady who treasured those moments back in the home," he said. "She even sent a Christmas card, thanking us again. It touched us as much as it did her."

By now, we'd returned to the Johnson stop. Thanking her, we waved as Keefer soon pulled away with two new passengers. Another day in the life of a working grandmother. And a 60-cent adventure for two grown men.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 12/21/2014

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