Here’s the roundup of tales from my adventures and observations working for Portland Streetcar in 2017 . . . .
Jan. 16: I don't live to terrorize toddlers, honestly, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
A family of four got on the streetcar at NW 23rd and Marshall: young couple with what looked like a pair of twin boys about 2-1/2 years old. The one with the father was Not. Going. To. Accept his Dad’s explanation that he had to sit on his father’s lap during the streetcar ride, and was winding up into a sizable shriek when I leaned down to him, nose to nose, and said, matter-of-factly,
“Them’s the rules.”
That shut him up.
March 8: I could not get the on-board fare machine on 006 to accept either of the rider's two dollar bills or the one I pulled out of my billfold. So I went up to the operator's cabin to obtain a warning sticker.
As I selected an "Out of Order" sticker sign, the driver advised, "Don't put it on you."
May 1: Funniest quiet exchange of the day: I was at the NW 13th and Lovejoy platform and announced the imminent arrival of the shuttle bus to take people down 11th through downtown.
A woman said, “I like your honesty.” What do you mean, I asked. She thought I'd said “struggle bus.”
May 1: Well, that'll be hard to top. I was just thinking I was ready to take a few hours' break, since I've been on shift steadily since before 6 a.m. and will do another few hours during evening rush hour, and I was just texting my supervisor to request that I be relieved . . . when a man walked up and said he was looking for a job interview in the porn industry.
It started innocently enough. He mainly said he was trying to get to a job interview, and needed money to live. “I don't believe in breeding; I believe in feeding.” He seemed pretty harmless, but I got a little tired after I insisted I couldn’t help him and he got more explicit and threw in some pelvic thrusts. I wish I could have transcribed his speech, ’cause it went on for quite a while, in a very reasonable and pleasant voice, but the content was . . . off. I think I remember the verb “sperming” among other things.
I couldn’t get rid of him, after repeatedly assuring him I was not conducting job interviews and didn't know anybody who is, but I felt I had to get him off the streetcar platform so he wouldn’t start pestering commuters. I broke away to the far end of the platform, and fortunately he wandered off before anyone else showed up.
May 13: Yesterday was an eventful and entertaining day on the NW 13th and Lovejoy streetcar platform (I was there for 5 hours). Encounters included:
-- at 10:35, a man from Nashville who was visiting his son at PSU. They went to 15 official stops on a college tour, and within 5 minutes on the PSU campus, “it felt like a fit, and that’s been confirmed ever since. And I get the added benefit of a second hometown!”
-- Crazies over the lunch hour. I noticed one saying “Hello?” and pressing his ear against a metal power pole; another very inebriated gent kept trying to talk loudly with me and anyone else who showed up -- a tiny East Indian woman edged around me to avoid him and I chatted with her. She turned out to be in-country from India for less than a year; works for Child Services in Salem. It didn't even occur to me to raise the specter of immigration policy.
-- At 12:59, an acting colleague, the filmmaker Jerry Bell, Jr., happened by, and we chatted.
The weather see-sawed between brief patches of bright, warm sun, sprinkles, and at least two short but driving downpours. At one point I observed, loudly, “Ah! Another 15 seconds of sunshine!” A waiting passenger commented, “We're gettin’ spoiled.”
May 17: It was a small grey spider, its legs wrapped around itself inside a loose cocoon of webbing attached to the center of a sign under glass that I had to replace at the SW 11th and Taylor platform (behind the library).
I wondered whether it was even alive, ensconced in a narrow space where insects would have to work hard just to get through the crack around the metal door inside the frame of the sign. I couldn't leave the spider in there, let alone move it with its web-frame to the new sign I was installing to advertise a brand-new sponsor. (Kind of sends the wrong message, in more ways than one, you know?)
I nudged the webbing with my finger and the spider stirred on this still-cold Wednesday morning about 9:30. So I carried the whole sign over to some flower beds behind the platform and shook the spider into them. I wish you good hunting, friend.
June 14: He got on at NW 11th and Johnson with several bags and sat at the very end of the car. I picked up his strong B.O. immediately, partly because the ventilation system was circulating the on-board air vigorously, but the smell might have been much worse if it hadn't been. I was doing passenger counts, so I didn't want to hassle with him, but I kept an eye on him all the way down the west side. He seemed to be napping.
When we got to the final stop before Tilikum Crossing, I went over and asked him where he was headed. Supermarket or electronics store, he responded, but I want a Fred Meyer not a Safeway because I need to charge my electronics. You just passed a bunch of markets and electronics stores downtown, I remarked drily; now we're going over to the east side. Really, he asked in a not-terribly-caring-or-surprised voice. Yup, I said, and walked away.
Gotta respect a guy who prioritizes his electronics over a bath.
July 11: Worked a late shift on the streetcar tonight for the first time in a long time. Picked up a lot of trash on various trains, from a spilled coffee(?) drink that had more the dark color and thickness of chocolate syrup, to lots of newspapers and food wrappers, a half-eaten candy bar, and three cigarette butts (all on the same train -- an unhappy new record).
Riders were all mostly well behaved, though, and the low rate of fareless riders hadn't risen, somewhat to my surprise (since we haven't been checking fares for a couple of months because of other demands). One operator said you should have been on my last circuit; there were some kids sitting behind me who were saying 35 percent of streetcar riders don't pay fare, and I suspect they were part of that group.
One operator, who used to be a limo driver in LA, told me about chauffeuring George Harrison from the Beverly Hills Four Seasons to Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City in about 1998 or ’99. He said Harrison asked to be let out a half block away from the place, so as not to make a grand entrance.
On my final run home, about 10:20 p.m., after I asked to see fares, a woman remarked, “First time I’ve seen a checker!” With secretive, raised eyebrows, I told her, “We’re rare!”
Nov. 10: I was assaulted on the streetcar today . . . with pieces of sandwich meat.
A prickly young man I may have recognized was nursing a half-eaten sandwich as we were heading east on SW Market. He immediately went on the offensive when I asked to see his proof of fare. “You’re just a surveyor, you’re not a fare inspector. You can kiss my ass!” I told him he would have to get off the train, and as we pulled to a stop at the SW Park and Market platform in the South Park Blocks, I hastened to the front of the streetcar to notify the operator.
While I was at the other end apprising the driver of the situation, the man got off the train but continue to yell at me through the open doors. He flung a handful of tiny sausage pebbles at my chest before stalking off as the doors closed.
One of my supervisors was riding the train, too, and she said “I was just about to get between you two.” An elderly African-American passenger commented to me, “You can’t buy that kind of entertainment.”
Dec. 4: “Where’d you get that feather?”
Someone finally noticed . . . or at least remarked to me for the first time after noticing.
Several months ago I found a small grey feather -- simple, with four inches of vane -- on a streetcar platform. I jammed the inch-and-a-half of quill into the seam of the breast pocket on the right side of my bright yellow hazard vest, where it has stood, quiet but proud, straight and tall over my right pectoral whenever I've been on the job ever since.
Finally this afternoon, a young woman on the crowded streetcar I was working asked about it at 2:56 p.m. I told her, and she said she loved feathers and was always finding them and bringing them home as a girl. My parents said, don’t do that; they could be covered with disease and parasites, she went on. She was amazed I had been wearing it for at least two months. I said I was surprised it had taken that long for someone to notice and comment.
It made her happy to see me wearing a little grey feather on my Portland Streetcar work vest.
If you haven’t seen my Portland Streetcar tales from years past, click here for the 2016 report, here for 2015, and here for the best stories from 2014.
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