Unruly Passenger
Is anyone else out there visibly shaken by conditions on theT? I’m not referring to breakdowns and collisions on the subway, or trash and swill strewn about trolley cars. We’ve learned to live with that. I’m talking about the bedlam that now prevails on the buses.
Who’s responsible for all these baby carriages? There were never any baby carriages on the bus before. Why are they there now? Does this have something to do with the New World Order?
The answer of course is yes. It shouldn’t take a reasonable mind more than two seconds flat to arrive at the inescapable conclusion that it’s a full frontal assault on Western Civilization!
Babies are put here on earth to be strolled along the sidewalk by proud parents for the express purpose of showing them off to other parents who are likewise strolling their offspring up and down the sidewalk. This is why they’re called strollers. They’re supposed to be strolled on the sidewalk, get it? You can’t stroll a baby on the bus. Everybody knows That! But for some sinister reason that’s all been changed.
The immediate consequence of this infraction against civil order: I can’t get on and off the bus! And I’m hopping mad about it.
When I board the 117 bus at Wonderland, I grab the seat right next to the rear door because there are a few passengers there at the beginning of the route when I’m returning from Revere Beach.
I’ve been taking the 117 bus back and forth from the beach since the 1950’s. There were no baby carriages on the bus back then. People knew better. It was a pleasant ride, with no shrieking kids. Why can’t I go to Revere Beach in peace anymore? That’s where I learned to swim. We used to get a lot of serenity at the beach. That’s gone now.
The bus stops on Beach Street and two baby carriages are hauled aboard by immigrants. I surmise that some of them are illegal. Some are carrying firearms. Serenity is supplanted with anxiety and loathing as the babies begin blathering and whining for milk.
Two stops down the street, another carriage. This time, a wide-track double seater. One of the brats is about 12 years old and is way too big to be getting hauled around in a carriage, but his obese mother crammed the urchin in. He’ll grow up to be a dead beat, no doubt, like most of the rest of them.
On the corner of Broadway the Vietnamese start loading their buggies on bringing with them that peculiar stink from the perfume River that ran through Hue City and I flash back to those days during the war when we destroyed most of the place with high explosives. We were doing God’s work.
The flash-backs continue down Broadway as we continue to jam the carriages further back into the bus. Nondescript aliens are pressed into service dragging gooey little vehicles to the rear with their screeching cargo. Hispanics mostly. A few white drug addicts.
Of course it’s nothing new to me. I’ve rode on a few busses in the Third World years ago. The only difference is that so far, the immigrants are not bringing any livestock on the117 bus. In Viet Nam they brought along their pigs and goats, just as if they were members of the family. The stench was unforgettable and I slipped and slid on the animal droppings covering the floor as I exited the bus at China Beach to search for a bar. Right after getting tetanus shot at the Field Hospital. The lengths we’ll go to for a drink when we’re stuck in some cesspool overseas!
In Venezuela it was mostly chickens and guinea pigs. At least they have the common courtesy to throw sawdust on the bus floor to soak up some of the filth. We don’t need any stinking busses. Bring on the cattle cars.
I have great difficulty prying myself out of my seat and angrily pushing my way through obstacles and chubby unwed mothers to get out of the bus at my stop in good old Chelsea (Well it used to be good). Unrecognizable now that the “civil order” of the shining city on the hill, that Adam Smith and Edmund Burke wrote about are no more.
We’re part of the Third World now. It seems unfair to blame Congress. No, I blame wimpy white-men. Remember the scene from the movie “the D.I.”, with Jack Webb:
Pvt Owen: “whose country is this?
The Captain: “whose country is it put Owen? It’s your country. That’s whose country it is!”
Have you had enough of the New World Order? Do you want western Civilization back? Or are you waiting for the livestock to arrive?
Jax Jones is a contributing columnist and deputy director of the Never Green Foundation, a retro think tank in the vicinity of Revere Beach.
