All Bonnaroo Saga posts: tag/Bonnaroo 07
Tennessee Jed by the Grateful Dead
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/gd89-08-19.schoeps.13254.sbeok.shnf/gd89-08-19d1t05_64kb.mp3]
So the bus did come at 0530, but that story is less interesting, and I’ll leave it alone for a little while. Shortly after I sat down at the gate for the 0530 bus, a fella wondered over to me and struck up a conversation. His name was Neftali, and he had worse luck than anyone I had met so far. As best I could tell he was traveling from New Jersey to New Orleans. Somewhere along the way he lost his wallet, which included some $400 and his ID. He tole me how he hadn’t eaten in three days, except what he had stolen from the lil store in stations. He asked to use my phone, and I let him. He called his girlfriend (who lives in NJ) and most of his story unfolded before me from the one side of the conversation I heard. He had been on his way to meet his girl when he lost his wallet, and turned around and headed home (I think). She sounded either uninterested in him or crazy. I think it was a little of both. She kept hanging up on him or not responding for long stretches of time. Eventually he learned what she wanted him to do was get a job there, earn some money, and head back her way. That really wasn’t a great option, and he didn’t take well to it. He kept trying to find some harsh words to hurt her, but that didn’t really work. Neftali is a soft-spoken guy, and when he told her she had shit for brains, it was more like he was trying to explain that to her than insult her. Eventually he started quoting this long winded insult from Con Air (with all the relevant context as well), annd that was about when I stopped paying attention. His bus was coming at 0200, and I was counting down the time until he’d leave. He was a nice enough guy, and he was in a really shitty situation, but I couldn’t put up with him at that early hour. He couldn’t get any food because he didn’t have any money. He couldn’t get any money because Western Union requires IDs to claim money. All he could do was head home and hope. So around 2 he left, but not without leaving me his number first. I’ll call him tomorrow. I never did.
After he left, a few more people introduced themselves to me. Black Guy, Redneck, and Amazed Man. Amazed Man played the smallest role, so I’ll describe him first. He started to talk to me shortly after Neftali left. Amazed Man was waiting for his friend to arrive, but his friend hadn’t showed up yet. But as we talked, he couldn’t believe the details of my story, or that of Neftali’s. He kept saying “Oh my GOSH!” and couldn’t believe such troubles could befall us. He also couldn’t understand how Greyhound was still in business. After talking to me and Black Guy for a little while, he went to go check on his friend’s bus. Turns out it was running four hours late, and he decided to go home instead of wait. That is where his role in the story ends.
Redneck showed up in the terminal around 0100, but he was in and out of the terminal all night. While he was around I learned that he had gone to see his son off to Iraq (his son was a Marine). And was now on his way home to Alabama. Redneck plays a larger role later on, and that’s all you need to know for now.
Black Guy is the MVP of this station. He had been there as long as I had, waiting for the 0530 with his daughter (who was a little younger than I). Once Neftali left, he came over to make conversation, and proved to be the most amiable person I had met yet. He was in his fifties (like most people I meet, apparently). He was also heading home, to Memphis. We became fast friends trading Greyhound horror stories, and he told me about the good old days when they let him smoke and drink on the bus. He was much needed company.
Fast forward to about 0400, and a considerable line has built up for the 0530 bus, with Black Guy, Redneck, and myself at the front. Redneck and Black Guy were damned determined to get on the bus, and while my sentiments were the same, I wasn’t as willing to throw my weight around as they were. So I stuck right behind Redneck, sure he would clear the way. The problem was they we still had about an hour and a half until the bus got there, and already people were crowding the entrance of the gate. A bus pulled up on the other side of the door, and I leaned over to check it out. That was about when I set off the fire alarm. This confused the hell out of me, because not only did you have to pull down a lever to set it off, but you had to life a plastic shield to get to it. I had done neither of those things, but that didn’t make the alarm any quieter. Turns out that all I needed to do was lean on it to set it off. And it turns out that all that was needed to do to turn it off was smack that plastic shield really hard. Funny thing is, it took them about ten minutes to get around to doing that. Maybe its a semi-regular occurrence. As 0530 approaches, Redneck is promising violence and all sorts of maladies to the folks who snuck up to the front. I was sitting right behind him, waiting to pounce once the door opened. All of that ended up being unnecessary, because there was plenty of room on the bus, but inside, the tension was palpable. I sat down in a seat by the window, and waiting for everyone else to get on.
Paul sat down next to me. He never told me his name, but he looked like a Paul, so I’ll call him Paul. Paul was heading back home to Texas, specifically to a town I’d never heard of before and don’t remember now. He had been waiting as long as Redneck, Black Guy and myself, but he didn’t get in line until an hour before boarding. As a result he was 49th of the 55 boarding. Paul was a nice guy, didn’t speak much unless he had something to say. His manner reminded me of Bill, but I’ll continue to call him Paul so you can tell them apart. Paul and I rode together until Knoxville: 10 hours in all.
In Knoxville, I was supposed to meet a connecting bus that would take me to Manchester (my final destination). I went up to the counter and found that the bus to Manchester was at Gate 3, and was leaving in 10 minutes. Everything was looking fine. Now, if you’ve learned anything from this story so far, I hope it is that things are never as fine as they seem (at least not when Greyhound is concerned). I started to talk to the guy behind me in line, a dude with a lot of tattoos and piercing wearing a bowler hat. He told me that he was on his way to meet with a company that had just hired him to be a trucker. Yesterday, he had taken the test for his CDL, and failed at backing. Shortly after that the company he was planning to work for told him they were no longer interested. And shortly after that he got a call from another, better company, who was interested in him. That very morning he had taken the CDL test again and passed. Then he got a call from the second company again, saying they’d like to hire him. So he was on his way to a new career, just hours after finding out. I told him that his story was too happy, and that I hadn’t heard anything but horror stories yet that trip. So something was clearly wrong. And sure enough, when we start boarding and I present my ticket, I’m told that I can’t go to Manchester. Apparently Greyhound hadn’t prepared for Bonnaroo. So I am pointed to Gate 1 which will bring me to Nashville. And what is behind Gate 1? They very bus I had just gotten off. So I sit down next to Paul, who is in the window seat now, and explain as best I can what happened. We continue another couple stops on the way to Nashville, and I realize as 2100 rolls around, I’m about 12 hours late. Thanks Greyhound.
We show up at Nashville and get off. I go up to ask the folks at the counter when the next bus to Manchester is leaving. 1100 the following morning. At this point it is about 2200, which means my bus is thirteen hours away. I ask how far we are, and we’re only 65 miles away. I ask her if she knows of any cab services in the area. She tells me I have cute eyes (about as good of a compliment I could get considering I hadn’t showered or seen a mirror in 36 hours. I later saw myself and I looked like hell) and that she’d go out to her car to make a call to a service that only charged a buck a mile. While I’m waiting at the counter two folks just a bit older than me walk up, and it is obvious they’re heading the same way I am. They guy’s name is Charles, and I haven’t caught his girlfriend’s name yet. We combine our forces to try and bring down the price of a cab ride per person, but all the services that woman had called were booked, and the cabs outside the terminal were charging $140-$180 to get to Manchester. We eventually got them down to $120 for the three of us, but that was still too much considering we had already missed the Thursday night acts. We wondered around some more and eventually resigned ourselves to wait for the 1100 bus in the morning.