HOBOKEN LEGENDS: THE HAPPY BUS DRIVER
Adam Wade
 It was a week before this past Christmas and I longed
to be with my family in New Hampshire.
I had just put in a full fourteen hour day of work at the television ‘factory’
in Manhattan where I am employed as the ‘glue’ that keeps a particular TV show
together. My twenty-eight year old body felt like a weathered seventy year old’s.
I headed to a frat bar on the upper-east side to meet up with some old friends to
celebrate the upcoming holidays and drink away my frustrations and tiredness.
The bar was overly packed with immature drunkards and I hardly enjoyed my four $2 Natural
Light beers (my beer of choice). Still agitated and stressed out, I ducked out of the bar
without anybody noticing.
I cabbed it on down to 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, the Port Authority, to catch the 1:30
am bus back to Hoboken.
The 126 bus pulled up at Gate 79. I got on with only a hand full of other
people.
I sat down in the middle of the bus wishing I had put my walkman in my backpack that
previous morning. We pulled out of the bowels of the Port Authority and into
the Lincoln Tunnel and that's when I heard him… THE HAPPY BUS DRIVER.
“Greetings everyone, I hope you all had a splendid night in the big city that we call
New York. I am the Happy Busdriver, and I will taking you home ‘in style’
to Hoboken.”
I was a bit taken aback, never experiencing a bus driver talking over the intercom before.
He was a tall, husky black man in his early forties. He wore an old New Jersey
Transit cap and rimmed glasses.
The other passengers seemed bored by him, ‘they didn’t get it’. But I
got it. I needed refuge, I appreciated it.
“We are now coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel, first stop will be Weehawken and
then… you guessed it, the birthplace Ol’Blue Eyes Himself, Frank
Sinatra… Hoboken, USA.”
I beamed a big grin, and looked to see if the other passengers did the same. A
hipster wanna-be let out a big yawn. A prissy well groomed woman with her Coach bag rolled
her eyes while her boyfriend stared at his fingernails.
That’s when I made the move to the front, side seat of the bus.
“Hey.” I said.
“Rough night tonight?” The Happy Bus Driver personally asked me, as if he were
my lifelong friend,
“Yeah, rough day, rough night. “ I responded. “Ah… remember to take
one day at a time my friend, life is a marathon not a sprint. “
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I said.
He tilted his head to the side, “When you’re feeling down don’t forget to
smile, you have to believe in yourself and realize that you’re in it for the long
haul… you’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna be fine. You just
gotta smile.”
The bus pulled up to the next stop. “Tenth Street, Hoboken.” His velvety
voice rang over the bus intercom.
The door opened to the bus “Have a good night, sir.” I said with a
big smile.
“See there,” he said, “You’re gonna be fine and dandy with that big
smile.”
As I walked the few blocks home in the cold winter air, it felt good to be in
Hoboken, it felt good to be home.
It’s been over seven months since that night, and I have yet to be driven home again
by The Happy Bus Driver, but I’m sure some night when I’m tired and beat and
losing faith in my dreams of making it in New York City I’ll get on the 126 and…
he’ll be there full of optimism.
Adam Wade grew up and went to college in
New Hampshire, he moved to New York City the day of his graduation, and has
lived in Hoboken for the past 3 years. He loves Hoboken very much. He performs
comedy and storytelling all around New York City and a few times a year at the Goldhawk.
He appears nightly on ESPN CLASSIC's 'CLASSIC NOW'.
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