Magic Bus – My Adventures with Grandmere

Dec. 22, 2024

                            Illustration by Peter Noonan

 

During a recent visit to Boston, I squeezed down the crowded aisle of an MBTA bus before exiting. I felt badly for the customers waiting curbside, their faces masked in resignation. Boston busses are a mode of transportation, nothing more. They aren’t fun. The other riders weren’t reveling in the experience.

 

What a difference 50 years can make. Then, riding the bus was pure adventure for me, made all the more enjoyable by a special traveling companion, my Grandmère Paré.

 

Grandmère, my maternal grandmother, introduced me to the art of bus riding before I started school. Though I grew up in New Jersey, our family often made the pilgrimage to Mom’s hometown of Manchester, N.H., and my grandparents’ home on Pickering Street. Here, during the 1960s and early ‘70s, I learned the fundamentals of big-city public transportation.

 

My grandmother got her license late in life. She was almost 70 before finally taking her driver’s test, after my grandfather suffered a heart attack. Still, Grandmère rarely drove. Taking the bus downtown – to the Queen City’s beating heart – seemed more reasonable, more practical. She let someone else do the driving.

 

The best bus rides came during winter, with whispers of light snow snaking across the freshly plowed Manchester streets. Bundled in layers – it would take us forever to get dressed, with rubber buckle-up boots and heavy snow pants – Grandmère, my siblings and I would shuffle down to the bus stop on Webster Street.

 

At least two of us would hold tightly to Grandmère’s hands. She always wore fine black gloves that she somehow never misplaced. I remember the bright green woven cap that kept her coiffured silver hair in place, and a large black and green overcoat that brought the ensemble together.

 

Her cheeks, like the young faces of her entourage, turned a healthy red in the brisk winter gusts. Though well into her 60s, Grandmère had the energy of a woman a third her age, and our walk to the bus stop was more of a race. All five of us would typically tire well before she did.

 

Climbing aboard the bus, my stubby Irish nose barely rose above the coin box. Grandmère would converse cheerily with the driver while we fumbled for the change hidden in our mitten-covered hands.

 

I never questioned whether Grandmère actually knew the driver, or the dozens of passengers she would greet with a crisp “Hello” as she ushered us to an available seat. I just figured she must. Her dazzling, infectious smile was always returned in kind. The passengers probably weren’t elated about having these rambunctious youngsters interrupting the serenity of a quiet bus ride downtown, but Grandmère always won them over. Her exuberance was contagious.

 

Like Grandmère, I couldn’t sit still. Usually, I’d try to coax a neighboring passenger into light-hearted conversation, boasting about a new toy or inquiring about this and that as Grandmère tried to corral me back to my seat. Those were especially prized moments, when just the two of us – Grandmère and me – rode to town and back. I loved the powerful, steady hum of the bus engines, and the excitement of discovering a new city with Grandmère, with stores to explore and restaurants to sample.

 

In the 1980s, Grandmère still enjoyed remarkably good health. When she celebrated her 90^th birthday, she didn’t look a day past 70. She eventually moved from the house that my grandfather built to an apartment complex off River Road. But she kept riding the bus, maintaining a fabulous rapport with other passengers, bringing many into her ever-expanding circle of friends.

 

It’s been decades – a lifetime, really – since I last rode a Manchester Transit bus. We lost Grandmère in 1994, at the age of 98. I miss the sublime sense of adventure of those wintry days on the Webster Street bus. But I cherish the memories.

 

FINIS

 

This essay originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of New Hampshire Magazine.