La Pasionaria by the White Castle

 I have spoken previously about taking the 55th Street bus downtown.  Its path was basically a right angle, which to those of us familiar with the Pythagorean theorem is not the shortest path between downtown and say 55th and Kedzie.  Archer Avenue does not cross Kedzie at 55th but rather between 43rd and 44th streets, but still obviously a shorter route.  The downside was that you didn't get to keep your seat all the way like on the 55th Street bus, you had to disembark at Kedzie.

Every mile going westward from State is a major artery with 4 lanes, Halsted (800w), Ashland(1600w), Western(2400w), Pulaski (4000w), Cicero(4800w), Central(5600w).  But wait, what is 3200w?  That is Kedzie, for some reason the city fathers, in their farsighted wisdom saw to give Kedzie only two lanes.  One has to think that this was before the bus was invented,

On a four lane street, busses can leapfrog and share the load, but on a two lane street they can only follow one another which leads to bunching where there is maybe no bus for half an hour and then bam three, one after another, with the first jammed and the second not so much and the third hardly at all.

So while the Archer busses fairly flew down Archer Avenue, El Camino Real of the southwest side, once you got off at Kedzie it was sort of a crapshoot, not so bad in the summer with the waft from the nearby White Castle washing across you, but quite unpleasant in the dead of winter.

But owing to this bunching phenomena the CTA had provided another bus that originated just north of Archer and Kedzie, but these busses would not, upon seeing a shivering crowd just down the block, just pull out and pick them up.  There was probably some kind of schedule, but in the minds of the frozen horde they were up there in their toasty busses taking swigs from a half pint, shooting a little dice, having their way with some party dolls.

It wasn't right.  And one evening a woman spoke up.  This was something new.  Normally one just huddled and muttered to oneself about how wrong it was that we had to wait like that.  We were thinking of our own frozen toes and how dinner was getting cold, but this was our own personal injustice we never thought of ourselves being a group.

But then the woman spoke up. I don't recall her age or her appearance or anything about her, but she spoke up.  And then there was some muttered agreement from the crowd, then more.  And then people began to speak up, and then she was making some improvised speech, voicing what was in our hearts, and we were one with her, pointing at the bright lights of that bus just down the street that was just sitting there.  Just fucking sitting there.  Accusing fingers were raised, there was some stomping of feet, we were a mighty army and we were going to, going to what?

Well nothing it became crystal clear as a chill wind blew away the warmth from our waving arms, our stomping feet.  Our leader, our spokeswoman, our La Pasionaria, suddenly became just some batty crazy lady.  We shook our heads ruefully and looked down the street towards the bus that was still not moving.

Just a little story.  I was going to use it eventually to lead into stoicism vs utilitarianism, but maybe next post.