Dallas

Okay, I left off with us getting into Dallas. We had missed our connecting bus. Judy and Martha headed off to the women’s room while I entered the bus station to find the service desk.

I’m going to be blunt here. The Dallas station was a shock. It was dirty, old, and crowded. There had been no attempt, as there had been in Austin, to make it attractive. Instead, it was simply a warehouse for tired travelers.

And...the travelers. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. But the reality was that here, in Dallas, the crowd was not a happy one. There were some people who seemed well and prosperous, but many others...most of them?... were neither. Where in Austin, there been had a demarcation between the homeless and the passengers, now that line wasn’t so clear. Several of the individuals I saw traveling seemed to be very sick, or very poor, or both.

I remember walking to the service desk. A man went past me. Apparently he thought I’d overheard a conversation he’d had with the clerk there. He smiled at me. All his front teeth were gone. He wore a dirty shirt and a pair of stained bluejeans. His face was lined and tired and greenish with exhaustion or illness. He said to me, as if justifying something he must have said to the clerk, “Well, it is *my* money.” I had no idea how to reply, so I said nothing, and merely nodded.

I watched the crowd. There were a lot like him, one way or the other. As I say, I don’t mean to be offensive. But sometimes I think it is important to say outright that we are in the midst of an economic crisis. Yes, many of us, and maybe all the people who are reading this, are comfortable and will be for the foreseeable future. But, there is another side to the world. For many Americans, the Depression has returned in full force. For us to pretend otherwise is both cruel and dangerous.

Someday, we need to consider our national situation, and ask how it was that the middle class declined so swiftly, and why no one seemed to object.

But...anyway...

I went to the desk. A young woman was there, the same clerk (I expect) who’d dealt with the toothless man. I explained my situation. She regarded me with disinterest. She took my tickets from my hand, did something with a computer, and printed out new ones. I looked at them. The next bus...the bus we were supposed to take...was at 7:55 pm that night. We would arrive, now, in Wichita, at just after 3 in the morning.

What the hell were we going to do in Wichita at 3am? With no car? No one to meet us? No hotel reservation? No idea where we were? Three senior citizens, one of them disabled, and all of us in an unfamiliar city at night?

No. That wasn’t happening. That wasn’t an option.

I said I wanted a refund. She said “We don’t do refunds here.” And that was that.

After the trip, I sent an appeal into the Flixbus company. I’ve told them that since we were delayed so long we ought to have a refund. So far I haven’t heard anything back. I suspect I never will. If I don’t, though, I will send letters to the CEO of Flixbus Europe and the CEO of Flixbus USA. I have their names and mailing addresses. If nothing else, it will annoy them and take up staff time. A small vengeance, but one I’m willing to take.

I left the service desk. We still had a problem. We needed some way of getting to Winfield in time for Judy to meet with her editor on Monday.

I caught up with Judy and Martha in the crowded lobby. There was no place to sit, so we stood. I explained our situation. They weren’t surprised. They’d been expecting it. Martha said that the our best bet was renting a car and driving north. I agreed. Judy agreed. And so, after all our efforts to avoid a long drive, we decided to go by car.

But, first...first...there was something more.

We had to do lunch. And this time, for the first time all day, we’d get lucky.

More to come.

About the photos: Again, I have no pictures of the Dallas bus station. However, I will offer you these instead. They are all from the ice storm we had here in 2023. Everything...every last thing!...was covered in a sheet of ice. It caused considerable damage to area homes. I thought, therefore, they were nicely symbolic for an America which could be and should be blooming. But which instead is encased in ICE...

Copyright©2025 Michael Jay Tucker

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