Getting a tire fixed and other adventures

I took the car in to Goodyear Tire Co. yesterday at 9:30 to get the tire fixed, and they said that it "would be hours" before they could get to it.  So I decided to take the bus to the main library downtown to pick up two books and to sign up as a volunteer.

WRONG.

Our Louisville public library system is incredibly under endowed with books.  I was SHOCKED that they didn't have Mary Austin's LAND OF LITTLE RAIN, a minor classic of American Literature -- she collaborated on it with Ansel Adams, and the book has famous essays by her and amazing photographs of the American West by him.  They had none of her novels, none of her short stories, none of her poetry -- I mean it was pathetic and I was really surprised. 

In addition, I asked about volunteering and was told that they don't use volunteers at the main library.  They let me sign up, but by the time I got home, someone had called and confirmed that they don't use volunteers at the main library although they do at some of the branches.  So, I'll check in with the library at Mid-City Mall sometime soon and see what they have.  I don't actually feel the urgency of volunteering, but I know that eventually I will want to be doing something.

Anyway -- back to the experience at the library.  What to do?  I had my heart set on reading something by Mary Austin since hers will be the next biography that we read here at the condo, so I decided to hop another bus and go down to UofL to get books from their library.  Which of course THEY HAD.  They had that book and about 10 of her works.  I studied the photos and checked into her essays in the book I'd originally wanted and then chose another more fictional book. 

It was like heaven -- it was what I've been used to for 19 years working at UofL and never thinking a thing about it -- having at my fingers anything and everything I could possibly want to read -- and if I didn't have it the very minute I was there, I could get it in a few days through inter-library loan.  Absolute heaven.  I also checked out a murder mystery that I could have gotten at the public library, but why check it out at another library for 3 weeks when I could get it at the same library as the other book for TEN weeks?  And I ordered from inter-library loan a novel by an author who sets all his works in Bratislava.  As I said -- heaven.

On my way home I had the most fun-on-a-bus ever.  I do love a nice bus ride, and this one was GREAT.  it was AIR CONDITIONED, PACKED, SO DIVERSE with people coming from and going to the Kentucky Refugee Ministries, young mothers with babies and toddlers, old women KNITTING, young people working with their phones, a person in a wheelchair, women in saris and women in Muslim veils, older men in dirty, heavy workpants, a young woman in heels and a dress...............you get the picture.  It was unbelievable.  The atmosphere was just great -- friendly chatter, cooing over babies, laughter, helpfulness (during the overcrowded time of the journey, one middle-aged black woman repeatedly offered me her seat, for example, and a woman in the back kept announcing, "there are seats in the back!!!"), and a blur of languages bubbling through it all. There was respect -- when about a dozen people from KRM came on together and made their way to the seats in the back where I was perched, I noticed a young man jump up from sitting next to where what appeared to be an older Asian man had sat down and move to sit next to me.  The young man evidently noticed the flash of startle on the older man's face, and he reached over to assure the older man that he had moved because his seat had become too crowded.  The older man smiled and nodded his head. 

So, I wondered -- what is it about a short journey that can meld a community so fluidly and quickly?  And how long could such a community last? -- I suspect not very long, what would happen if something went wrong....like an accident or something?  What builds trust on a bus -- or a plane or train for that matter?  How many people do you need to build that sense of togetherness, because I've noticed on other trips in which the buses are emptier that people tend to sit silently unless they know each other.  Is it the quality of TRAVEL -- the assurance of brevity -- that allows us to lower our barriers with strangers quickly?  Cruises are longer, but my sister and her husband, who love cruising, report quick flash-ups of relatively close friendships for whom they have intentions of keeping in touch but then don't.  I'm thinking there have to be social norms at work -- but the real diversity of this busload of people gives me pause to think that there could be something universal about the way we interact on a bus.  Well -- I need an anthropologist.....