Rumble on the bus
I read in today’s Boston herald that a passenger and the driver got into a tussle on an MBTA bus. Somehow they managed to take it outside, literally, where several bystanders started pummeling the driver who was beaten senseless, from what I gather from the article. I wasn’t there so I don’t really know what prompted the bystanders to get involved, but beating up a bus driver certainly doesn’t sound like reasonable thing to do.
A few years ago, when I used to ride the bus to work, I witnessed a scuffle on a bus I was walking by in downtown Waterton (as opposed to tony uptown Watertown…). In a depressingly un-American fashion, passengers scrambled out of the bus while its driver was in engaged in shoving and grappling with a passenger. After failing to attract the attention of another busdriver, to get him to radio for police backup, and after being told that nobody around had a cell phone - this was in 1998 - I boarded the bus to help the driver. I entered the situation with perfect timing, as in the exact moment when the two combatants disengaged, with the driver, a short, middle-aged white man hastily leaving the scene while his antagonist, a tall, young black man screamed “motherfucking redneck motherfucker.”
The passenger told me that the two had gotten down to business when the driver refused to give him a 10 cent discount off the 65 cents fare. The agitated but surprisingly collected passenger insisted he was entitled to the discount because he was a student or some such. The verbal disagreement turned physical, although the young man, who claimed he was on his way to work (which seemed plausible considering it was no later than 8 am), insisted he had not punched the driver.
Then the passenger started walking away, before deciding it was better to deal with the situation up front, returning to the bus where two Watertown police cars were waiting. I don’t know what happened from that point on as I had to take my own darn bus to work, and since the officers hadn’t shown any interest in taking witness statements I didn’t feel particularly bad about leaving.
I was somewhat taken aback by the whole incident. Two sober adults, one at work and the other on his way to work, get into a fight in the AM, over 10 cents? It’s probably rhetorical to ask whether “race was a factor,” as news outlets like to put it. It’s probably one of my more memorable “welcome to America” moments.
