The summer between my sophomore and junior year of college I lived in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, in anticipation of starting at Seattle U in the fall. Meanwhile I worked at the Federal Building downtown for the Vietnam Vets of America. I was also taking some classes I needed at University of Washington. Translation, I became a master of bus schedules that summer, riding the bus all over Seattle, with the bonus of a leg in a walking cast.
I immensely enjoyed my time spent riding the buses in the pleasant summer weather. I would use the time to read some of my assignments, but often, I found myself people watching. One particular gentleman stood out from the rest. People gave the tall muscular African-American man a wide berth. He often sat alone on the bus, and though I never saw him harass or bother anyone, he talked to himself, mumbling obscenities while he listened to his headset. He dressed neatly, often wearing shorts and a tank top, along with white tennis shoes and socks, the anti-thesis to some of the other people who rode the bus. Whenever he got on the bus, he would drag a small carry-on suitcase with an igloo cooler bungeed to the top. I would often wonder what was in the luggage he dragged all over Seattle. I never imagined curiosity would be satisfied, nor would I have dreamed up what was actually in the cooler, either.
It was a warm, sunny day and due to a doctor’s appointment, because of the aforementioned cast, I had taken a different bus line than usual, and I was now waiting to catch my bus up Capitol Hill to go home. I remember looking up at the clear sunny sky, and then at the parking lot nearby full of high-end cars and thinking to myself how strange it was, there seemed to be so many birds hanging around. Literally hundreds of seagulls, pigeons, and even ravens sat on walls, light poles and even on the top of the building of this one bank parking lot. Shrugging and looking up, I saw a bus coming, but it was not mine. Mine was the number 10. I sat back down on the bus stop bench, as my ankle throbbed horribly in the walking cast after the session with the doctor. Thankfully I would only have to wear it for another month, the break was slowly healing after six months. I looked up in surprise as the gentleman with the cooler climbed off the bus, usual luggage in tow.
Without acknowledging me on the bench, he lugged his suitcase and cooler to the driveway of the parking lot. The birds immediately swarmed at his appearance. He opened the cooler, reaching in and pulling out bags of bread and bird seed. He threw it into the parking lot, on top of all the nice cars, all the while shouting the obscenities he usually (I’m presuming) muttered only under his breath. The birds eagerly gobbled up the offering, in the process defecating all over the vehicles in the lot. He did this for several minutes, unloading a few bags of bread and bird seed, then he closed his cooler, re-strapped it to the suitcase and waited for the bus which now approached. We both got on the bus, and he resumed his normal continence of sitting quietly and muttering to himself while listening to his music.
Admittedly, all I could think of was the lady from the Mary Poppins movie, singing, “Feed the Birds.”
From then on, whenever I saw him on the bus, I couldn’t help but smile. While I am certain the people who owned the cars in the parking lot didn’t appreciate his antics, that had to be one of the funniest, clever things I had ever witnessed. I often wondered what other places he visited and fed the birds, and why he did it. I will probably never know.