May 20, 2008
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For the past four years, L.A.-based singer/songwriter Doug Levitt has been periodically criss-crossing the country on a Greyhound bus, chronicling the stories of the people he meets along the way. He's gathered his essays into a collection called "Greyhound Diaries." They're stories of Americans struggling to get by, like the young man Levitt met late one night in Colorado.
I took the overnight from Denver to Kansas City. It was packed. I found the last two open seats and quickly chose the one with the scrawny neighbor, a kid with a blonde crewcut who looked like he was heading to baseball try-outs.
He seemed open to talking.
Where you headed?
Back to Arkansas from Seattle, he said, where he's been trying
hard to start a car detailing business. "It's a seasonal thing," he said. Turns out he's also just back from Iraq.
At a rest stop in Salina, Kansas at 2:30 in the morning, we talked about how the only growth strategy for so many people these days is a lotto ticket.
That's the way it was in Searcy, Arkansas, he said, a few years ago. And that's why Private Simmons joined the Army Reserves.
"'One weekend a month, two weeks a year.' There wasn't much else go-ing on. It was a way to pay the bills."
As the headlights streaked across the bus and most people slept through Kansas, he told me his story.
"Now my daddy didn't mess," he said. "He was backwoods. One time I was on the porch and tried to hit him. Next thing I knew I was off the porch and coming to. He said, 'Boy, if you're dumb enough to swing at your daddy... I will kill you.'"
"I was a knucklehead. My grandaddy'd said, 'Boy, you'll be in prison by the time you turn 15.' All these people thought I wouldn't amount to nothing."
After basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was shipped to Iraq.
"We were the front line, the first ones in after the Marines." All told it's about 120 pounds of gear. "We'd march 25 miles a day, sometimes." But Private Simmons didn't complain. "Sure, it isn't glorious," he said, "but it's gotta get done." The knucklehead had found a sense of duty, and through it, himself. Still, sometimes you don't know how much you've grown until you see your family, and they see you.
"After a year in Iraq, we flew into Fort Hood, and then back to Arkan-sas," he said. "We was in school buses and pulled into this stadium. And I swear all of Arkansas was there. I mean it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I'll tell my grandkids, it was the high point of my life, I'll never have nothing like that." He was looking for his father and family in the stands.
"We had rehearsed to get out of the buses in a single line, but as soon as they said we was relieved, we all started running across the field. There was this big wall to get to the stands where our families was.
"I jumped as high as I could, but came short. And then all I remember was this big arm grabbin' me, lifting me up. It was my daddy. Now growin' up, my daddy never cried or told me he loved me, nothing like that. It just wasn't his way, bein' backwoods and all. But he put me in his arms and, crying, he said, 'Today, I'm the most proudest man in the world. and I love you.' I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof that day. I still get chill bumps thinkin' about it."
It's like that on the bus: folks connecting by sharing their stories with to-tal strangers. I never did get Private Simmons's first name. We pulled into Kansas City before dawn, and he got on another bus, heading home to Arkansas.
