Unemployed in California, Week 31: Riding the Bus and 3 Dead Carpenters

I had my first bus ride in Oakland today. I used to have an F150 truck, but that's now gone. I've used the train hundreds of times, but in 13 year of life in Oakland, not the bus. It was a mildly eventful experience.

The main source of interest for myself and my co-riders, mostly women, mostly elderly, was the dude that got on with 3 absolutely huge bags of recyced bottles, excuse-me-ing his way to the back of the bus. For the person with probably the most difficult life of all of us on the bus, his loud cell phone conversation revealed he may have the most interesting life.

At some point he started yelling into his phone, "you calling me a Clown, G?" He repeated it four times. I began to conclude that the other person was in fact calling him a clown. Passing Fruitvale Ave. there was a mundane interval of talk about mouthwash, cologne and toothpaste, then things went downhill again with the menacing, "remember when I put the knife in you! Do you?" I figured the other person probably remembered that one pretty clearly. At some point I wondered if this was just a show for co-riders, but we were hardly a bunch that a young guy would want to impress. He was merely dealing with the business of his life on the edge. I wished him luck as I stepped off the bus. He nodded upwards and started back to make another call.

As I began the long walk home from the bus route, I wondered, after paying $2 busfare, how much was he going to make from 3 bags of bottles? In the future more of us will probably know the fetching price for a trash bag of plastic bottles. I blogged a couple of weeks ago about being invited to go 'recycling' through people's garbage by some lads who live at the end of our block. Those guys have a dented old, wood-sided pickup truck, but are a step up the poverty hierarchy than my buddy on the bus. They deal not just in plastic and glass, but in aluminum and copper. And now I'm a guy on the bus with no truck. It seems like more paths are crossing during this capitalist recession as the boat gently sinks down for all of us.

In the last 2 weeks I've moved up the Carpenters Union out-of-work list 3 spots from #221 to #218. At the union hall no-one had heard of any jobs coming in, and as I got bumped up the list 3 places I joked maybe 3 guys ahead of me died. It was a bad joke, but it caused a small ripple of laughter among my fellow unemployed carpenters who are increasingly used to looking at the dark side of things.

I've kinda concluded that despite being highly skilled in my narrow field within construction that I may have to look beyond carpententry for work. It'd have to be a blue collar job as I don't have a degree or anything. I don't even have a high school diploma. I jokingly got my teenage neighbor last night to agree that to sit my GED exam for me! He'd just need to shave his head to match my ID.

In closing, I've been thinking about education lately. I left school at 16; my brothers left at 15. As I didn't go to college I can't claim to be the first in my family to got to college, but I was the first one in my family to stay in school till I was 16! Mmmm. It doesn't have the same ring of success, does it?

Rob, Oakland