(JH, SH, C-U)

Gilbert A. Sprauve

The following text is presented as a vignette in the context of issues of contemporary folk culture. Some of the textual material we have chosen to include in this manual could best be qualified as "vignette" or "specimen." We consider the characterization vignette when the passage essentially makes its own statement and specimen when it relates closely enough to a major article that its presence alongside the latter contributes significantly to the underscoring of

its main points.

She'd signaled from the side of the road for the bus to halt for her. A stout, hardworking, healthy-looking Black woman. Before taking a seat she arranged her two plastic bags of empty aluminum cans neatly under the seat on the vehicle she would occupy. The seat she chose was next to his, though she had had a choice of any other seat she wished on this bus this Sunday afternoon.

No sooner had they exchanged howdys, that she challenged him: "You don't know who I am!!!" He nodded agreement feebly. "How come I know your name and you don't know mine?"

In short order she revealed that she'd campaigned for him the time fourteen years ago when he'd run for a Senate seat, and won. She had an opinion for most important issues facing the islands, and told him that she often called the Saturday call-in show on radio and contributed her two cents. As the bus gained more passengers on its way towards Christiansted, this stocky woman with her plastic bags of empty aluminum cans continued to expound on one issue and another, for his edification and that of the other passengers and the driver. For, there was one bus stop near Sunny Isles that was poorly located and was only creating a traffic hazard and to boot causing drivers to be ticketed. Yet, all in all, this bus service was improving the quality of life for people. If she or John Doe wanted to go to the beach up on the East End nowadays, all they had to do was get a bus schedule and be at the right stop at the right time.

But some bad-minded taxi-van operators were trying to sabotage the service by paying some good-for-nothings to take out the signs for the bus stops. She had had to remind a set of drivers that they had had their chance to serve the people better all these years, had refused to provide service to passengers who lived off the main line. And they should remember that these people who were driving these public buses were people just like them with mouths to feed and children to clothe. (So persuasive was she in her re-staged remote engagement with the taximen that another passenger, a heavy set younger woman sitting in the middle of the bus chimed in with her own endorsement of the service; she could now do her shopping at a market that she hadn't been able to get to all these years!)

Somehow the conversation came around to recycling. She said she'd made as much as $35.00 on one trip with her cans. But recently she was being more circumspect. Some people were making it harder for others. The recycling people had discovered that some individuals were putting sand in the cans to increase their weight. Besides, you never know what you're going to discover in a garbage bin anymore. Look at that man, who found the baby. "And the man had a right to keep the baby. Instead, they take it from him. It was his baby; he found it!" And, because Plunger was off island when the incident took place and wasn't current she filled him in on the details: "Imagine, a forty-five year old woman. And the father was a man in his seventies. But he was married. Told the police the woman gave him the bag to throw in the garbage and he never know what was in it. I know one thing: I bring seventeen of them into the world and thirteen of them live. And I never once think about throwing away any of them. And I never encourage any of my daughter to do that. But to get back to the man who find the baby. It's only because he went to throw away his garbage, and he hear the infant crying, which somebody else might not have paid any attention, or decide it was a cat or something. It was his, and they had a right to give it to him. Too much unfairness. If he had keep it they would have never know. If anything like that happen to me, I turning around and walking away. I'm not getting into anything like that."

(The above incident took place in early October of 1994 and is reported on by Gilbert A. Sprauve.)

DISCUSSION:

1. This mature woman enters a public bus on which the narrator is the only other passenger this Sunday afternoon and chooses to sit on the same seat within a foot of him. Does this act say anything to you about the two individuals?

2. Does this passenger display an attitude of hostility towards the narrator? Or, is she warm towards him? Or indifferent?

3. Based on what you believe you know about this woman, what do you suppose she means when she says she campaigned for the narrator? What activities would she probably have engaged in on his behalf?

4. How would this woman contribute her "two cents" to a radio call-in show. Could you create a brief dialogue that she might be engaged in on any given Saturday with the host of a call-in show?

5. Could you give one reason why people on the bus were not likely to think the woman was "talking random," but instead was making enough sense to deserve some attention?

6. Do you get the feeling that this woman felt that Public Works and the Police Department were doing all that they possibly could to make the bus ride a safe and pleasant one?

7. Is it possible to conclude from the text you are reading that the taxi-van drivers were making regular trips to the beach at Cramer's Park?

8. Do you have the impression that this woman could testify in Court that she knew who the people were who were taking down the bus stop signs and the persons who were instigating them to commit the act?

9. In this woman's view, who provided the more adequate service to the riding public, the bus or the taxi vans?

10. Did her statements about the quality of the service encourage others on the bus to speak up in protest against the bus company?

11. Do you believe that the re-cycling people were paying persons like this passenger per can delivered or by the weight of their bags?

12. Besides the aluminum cans from one's own household, where would a good deal of the cans come from that people would return for re-cycling, according to this text?

13. According to the passenger, what lead to the baby's presence in the garbage bin?

14. What lead to the discovery of the foul act?

15. Does the passenger have a clear opinion of who the guilty party or parties is or are?

16. Does she have an opinion concerning what ought to be done with the baby?

17. Does this person impress you as someone who would likely turn her back on an infant that she might discover one day in a garbage bin? Explain the basis of your answer!

ACTION OPTION: Students might develop and perform a skit on the whole content of the above vignette or on the accidental discovery of the baby in the bin and its consequences.