More from da bus

I had purchased a tube of sour-cream-and-onion Pringles in the Sioux City station, and I had barely popped the top and taken a couple of bites before the voice came from behind me. She started with something mundane, like, "They were supposed to transfer my bag from the other bus, weren't they?" or "What time are we supposed to get into Omaha?" But soon a learned that she had left Chippewa Falls, Wis., that morning and was heading back to Reno, Nevada, where she had lived for 23 years.

“I’m done with that town,” she said. “I’ve never been in a place were people were so unfriendly. Nobody would even offer he a ride to the store. I’m there all alone, without a car, and nobody would come by and say, ‘I’m going to the store, do you want to go along?”

"I just couldn't stand the the cold anymore. And it's the most boring place I've ever been; there's nothing going on there." She'd moved from Reno to Chippewa Falls several months ago, because she had a couple of friends living there and they suggested she move there to be close to them. "People were so unfriendly there," she said. "No one would even offer me a ride to the store, and I didn't have a car. My friends never stopped and said, we're going to the store; do you want to go along. I just couldn't take any more. My rent was due today, so I just left."

Apparently, given her comments, she did have a bag in the luggage compartment, and she also had two carry-on items: A purse, filled to overflowing, and a white, kitchen garbage bag bulging with clothes and shoes. The garbage bag was already stretching out and had a developed a couple of holes. I figured that its chance of surviving all the way to Reno was a long shot.

She never told me her name but I learned what it was when she would quote someone saying to her, "Shirley..." Shirley grew up in a small town in southern Indiana, so small that there were only three or four kids in the town, total. I learned this when I said I was surprised at her experience in Wisconsin, because people in the Midwest are generally friendly and nice. "My mother was never all that nice," she responded, and told me how, as a young teenager she escape her mean, selfish mom to spend time at the house of some childless neighbors, who gave her beer and cigarettes. Or she would lift cigarettes from the grocery store her parents owned and sneak off into the fields or the woods to smoke.

I knew about southern Indiana. A colleague of mine taught high school band in a little south Indiana town, I told her. And his recollection was that mostly they wanted to spy on each other and gossip.

But Shirley didn’t really require any prompting from me.