Judging from Uncle Ken's last post, he didn't know about the Archer Express. I didn't know about it myself until I took a part time job downtown during my last semester at Gage Park High. The Archer Express originated somewhere south of Gage Park and ran north on California until it turned right on Archer and went straight to the Loop, whereupon it turned around and retraced its route. It only stopped at major intersections, which is what made it an express. I don't think it ran at night, which must have been why I came home a different way after work. Then I would take the Lake Street El to Kedzie and the Kedzie bus back to 51st Street.
Kedzie was really slow in the daytime, but traffic was light after 6:00 PM and the Kedzie bus moved right along. It was kind of spooky, though, waiting for the bus in the shadow of the El after dark. I never explored the neighborhood around the bus stop, just stood there minding my own business like my mother taught me to do when I found myself in a "questionable" neighborhood. The only real scare I had was once when this cute little colored boy came up to me and started asking questions about my ROTC uniform. This made me nervous because they would sometimes use a little kid like that as a decoy to set you up for an ambush, or so I had been told. Sure enough, pretty soon four or five Black dudes, who looked to be about my age, came sauntering across the street towards us. "Come onnn bus!" I said to myself, but the bus was nowhere in sight. When they were upon us, one of the dudes asked the little kid if everything was all right. The kid assured him that it was, and the dudes sauntered away down the street without acknowledging my presence.
A year or two before that, when I was still working part time at my dad's store, Kedzie was gridlocked for a month or more because they were doing some work on the bridges that crossed the three channels of a canal. I left home plenty early because I knew it was going to be a long three mile bus ride that day. I also had to walk a few blocks from Whipple to Kedzie to catch the bus and then a few more blocks down 27th Street to get to the store on the corner of 27th and Millard. like I said, Kedzie was grid locked and there was no bus in sight. I could walk three or four miles an hour without breaking a sweat in those days, so I decided to start walking until a bus caught up with me. I actually caught up with a bus before a bus caught up with me. The driver opened the door, but I waved him on and kept walking past him. He passed me after the light changed, but I passed him again while he was waiting for the next light. This scene was repeated at each light between 51st and 27th. I smiled and waved to the driver each time I passed him, but he never did the same when he passed me. Indeed, he had this mean look on his face the whole time, but the passengers were so cheerful that they were laughing out loud. Go figure!
No comments:
Post a Comment