JOEL SNELL / THE GIRL ON THE BUS ROUTE/ 56thst.com

When I was a junior in high school, I was asked by my parents to give a young lady a ride back to her home in Atlantic, Iowa. I believe it was on a school day. I drove and so did a friend of mine. It was a task that was asked of me by my mother’s church. This young lady needed the help and my friend and I were there to assist her. Years later, she moved to Omaha.

She lived among the duplexes near Mutual of Omaha later in life and there were parties in and among the apartments and duplexes for those who worked at the insurance company. During the week, young women would type all day or do filing. Many small town girls moved to Omaha, because there was a chance to get a job at Mutual and hopefully find a husband. So we met again at a party. From the insurance company’s neighborhood we drove to other parties. That was the last time that I saw her in person.

A number of decades later, I was riding in the back seat of a friend’s car. He was taking me to the air port. As we were driving along a major street, there she was standing alone at a bus stop surrounded by a hardened plastic cover over the bus stop wood and cement seat.

We were driving slow enough and I saw her again. It was very cold and she stomping on the cement to stay warm. I was perhaps 10 to 20 feet from her. I should have had my driver friend stop and pick her up. However, the whole incident was extremely brief and it took me a number of minutes to patch her memory with my previous perception.

I felt very sad for her because the jobs there at the insurance company were known to be very dull and finding a husband was a very risky business. Later in life, I saw ABOUT SCHMIDT movie. He lived in Omaha on south 57^th st not far from the insurance company. His plan was to capture American capitalism. He did move up to middle management, however that was not his dream. After his retirement, he returned to the company and he found piles of his work in the alley. He came back to his company and they were really too busy to see him. When one says that they hope to see you again. That should not be taken literally. It is a certitude built in a conversation in large gesellschaft interactions of people connecting to each other by contract and then moving on. If they should accidentally bump into each other, it a surprise and not a common occurrence.

By the way, I wrote a letter to the address that was indicated in the movie, but I got a “return to sender” back from the post service. And so it goes.