Interview with the Longest-Serving Bus Driver

THIRTY-ONE YEARS ON ROUTE 9

This afternoon, Eusebio parked the Route 9 bus at the station for the last time. For thirty-one years he has driven the five o'clock bus from our town to the capital and back. He says he has never missed a day because of illness. We talked to him an hour after his last trip, while he was still wearing his uniform.

Q: How many kilometers do you think you've driven?

Eusebio: I've never counted. My wife says I've been to the moon and back three times, and she's probably right. It's 140 kilometers each way.

Q: What's the hardest part of the job?

Eusebio: Getting up at four. After thirty-one years, my body still hasn't accepted it.

Q: Is there a passenger you've never forgotten?

Eusebio: Many, but one more than the others. For six years, a girl called Liesel took my bus every Monday to study medicine in the capital. She always sat right behind me with a huge book on her knees, and if I took a curve too fast, she complained. Last year a doctor stopped me in the market and said, "You drove me to every exam I ever passed." It was Liesel. I didn't recognize her without the book.

Q: Has anything ever gone really wrong?

Eusebio: Once, in the rainy season of 2009, a landslide closed the road in front of us, and we were stuck for nine hours. Nobody had brought any food except an old woman with a basket of tamales for her daughter's wedding. She shared them with all forty passengers. I've never eaten better tamales in my life. Her daughter, I heard, forgave her.

Q: What will you miss most?

Eusebio: The people. Not the traffic in the capital, I promise you.

Q: And tomorrow, on your first day as a retired man?

Eusebio: Tomorrow at five I'll be at the bus stop, as always. I've already bought my ticket. For the first time in thirty-one years, I'm going to sit behind the driver. I want to see what the road looks like when you don't have to watch it.