Tales of Patience in Transit Strike : Riders Keep Their Humor Amid the Confusion

As the transit strike rolled into its first weekend, only six Metropolitan Transportation Authority lines were in service--four for buses and two for trains. Commuters who climbed aboard Saturday were trying to get to stores, work, the beach, or just out of the house. Here are some stories from the front:

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At the 103rd Street station, Jasmin Pickering, 6, marched onto the Blue Line train in oversize flower-framed sunglasses, clutching a plastic pail and shovel, a towel and a T-shirt. She was followed by her brother, Jeremy, 12, toting a Boogie Board.

“We didn’t know if it was running, so we just came over,” said their mother, Stacy Williams, 29, whose Watts home is not far from the Blue Line station. “I knew that it was the only thing that would get us to Long Beach.”

They were not sure how far the train would take them but they were determined to get to the beach. “It’s too hot in Los Angeles,” Williams said.

Besides, she said, “my kids like to ride the train. It’s like a little trip.”

Jasmin, her braids festooned with bright, colorful barrettes, smiled deliciously. “It’s fun,” she said of the train. “It goes fast.”

Williams, a medical assistant in a senior citizens home, left behind a cranky car and her car mechanic husband--who had already spent hours trying to fix the auto.

“He’s all bummed out about the car. He wants to stay home and mope,” Williams said, laughing. “I said, ‘Me and the kids are going to the beach.’ ”

*

“This is a trip,” Excell Oliver said with a weary smile, settling back on the Blue Line train that would take him from the Downtown Metro Center to somewhere, anywhere near Orange County, he hoped.

“Now with the strike, to get to Orange County, it’s like trying to get to the moon,” said Oliver, 35. His usual express bus from Los Angeles to Disneyland--a casualty of the strike--looked like a rocket compared to the alternates Oliver had been desperately trying to piece together since late Friday night. A county government word processor most of the week, Oliver works in the city of Orange from Friday night to Sunday afternoon for a man who owns a janitorial service. He had already missed a Friday night job, but his boss was understanding.

“He told me last night: ‘Get anywhere in the vicinity and I’ll come pick you up,’ but I haven’t been able to figure out how to get to the vicinity.’ ”

He took a bus from his Mid-Wilshire home to Alvarado Street and the Red Line train from there to Metro Center and the Blue Line. “I’m taking this hopefully to Anaheim,” he said pointing out the Anaheim stop on one of his newly collected route maps. “Anaheim is Orange County,” he said tentatively.

But a look at a map on the wall of the bus revealed that “Anaheim” is “Anaheim Street.” It looked like the end of the line in Long Beach was as close as he would get to Orange County. But no sooner had he engrossed himself in his paperback novel than a voice over the loudspeaker called out: “This is Willow, our final stop. . . . If you need to go farther south, we have a shuttle bus.”

The train ride ended four stops short of Long Beach. Oliver lifted the strap of his small overnight bag over his shoulder and headed out onto the sun-splashed station platform, looking both ways in bewilderment.

“This is like taking a long walk on a short pier,” he said with a chuckle and followed the other marooned train passengers in search of a shuttle bus.

Out for a Jaunt to the Supermarket

The No. 21 bus deposited her at Wilshire and Westwood boulevards. Immaculately dressed in a turquoise blue suit, white pumps and white beaded cotton gloves, she looked as if she should have been headed east toward a Mid-Wilshire tearoom of another era. Indeed, she is an actress from another era. (“You’ll recognize my name,” she said without any pretension. “Frances Woodward.”)

But on this sunny afternoon, she was waiting patiently for another bus to take her farther west to the Saturday afternoon clamor of the Ralphs supermarket on Wilshire at Bundy Drive.

“My husband passed away, so I do things the way I want,” said Woodward, who picked up the bus near her Beverly Glen Boulevard and Wilshire home. “When I feel like it, I do it. I looked out, it was a pretty nice day.”

So bus strike or not, she was off to the market for the few items she craved. “There were a few things I wanted to have--I thought: ‘That would taste real good today.’ ” She wouldn’t identify them. “That’s personal,” she said simply, her pale, translucent skin shaded from the sun by a small-brimmed hat.

She could have gotten a ride from people who live around her. “They’re always wanting to take me here, take me there,” Woodward said, “but I want to do things on my own.”

For a Veteran Rider, ‘Everything’s Lovely’

“Step to the back of the bus,” the driver said as dozens of riders squeezed into the westbound No. 30 on Pico Boulevard on Saturday afternoon.

“There’s plenty of room in the back!” called out Jimmie Burkley, grinning maniacally from his seat by the rear door. “A dollar for a seat! One dollar!”

The passengers laughed, and then bellowed when Burkley began popping his dentures out of his mouth. The 83-year-old security guard wasn’t about to let a bus strike spoil his commuting enjoyment.

“Everything’s lovely,” he said, popping his teeth again to the delight of his neighbors. “They’re running pretty regular.”

Burkley likes riding buses. “I like sitting aside beautiful people,” he said, as he proceeded to ask some women if they were married. When they said yes, he shrugged and said, “Bye!”

As Burkley’s fellow riders trickled off the bus, he waved to them, popping his teeth to a couple of amused passengers as a farewell.

Burkley has been riding Los Angeles public transit since he came from Ft. Worth in 1942. He was taking No. 30 from Clifton’s cafeteria, a Downtown restaurant where he regularly eats, to his job at 11th Place and Western Avenue.

Burkley thought the substitute driver was doing a pretty good job. “He drives good. Hey, bus driver, what’s your name?”

No answer.

Burkley began to worry whether he could get to his church today. “Hey, you going to be driving tomorrow?” he hollered to the driver.

“Not me,” the driver said, chuckling.

‘You’ve Just Got to Play Along’

John Pickford waited an hour in the shade for No. 204 to take him from his Wilshire district house to his aunt Dorothy’s place in South-Central. But he still had a long walk ahead of him, from the stop on Vermont Avenue and 48th Street to 48th and Gramercy Place. Pickford has a chronic health problem and has missed his last three dialysis treatments at a doctor’s office in Compton because of the strike, so he was not looking forward to the trek.

“I have to walk everywhere,” he said. “It’s a terrible feeling, like you’re going to pass out.” His eyes lit up when he saw an open seat in the crowded bus, and he slid into it right away.

Pickford, 30, plans to stay at his aunt’s for the weekend, cooking enchiladas for her. His condition keeps him from driving, he said, so during the strike he has been staying at home, “doing nothing and watching TV.” He has been keeping careful tabs on the labor dispute, and was glad to see that service would be offered today.

Pickford said he does not have any other transportation alternatives, and he has just got to adapt to the strike. “You’ve just got to play along with the program,” he said.

He added that if he misses his next doctor’s appointment his life could be in danger, so he will take a taxi.

He hopes the strike ends soon, and knows exactly what he’ll do when it does: “I’ll jump on the bus and ride to the beach and kick back and enjoy the sun, cook up a few hamburgers and get me a six-pack of soda--I can’t drink beer. I’ll get my nieces and my nephews and dump them in the bus and take them all to Venice Beach.”

A Field Trip to Downtown L.A.

“We’re not regular commuters,” said Christina Jokanovich, 27, with a grin.

“We’re on a field trip,” her 35-year-old brother, Nick, added dryly as his two sisters and their parents laughed above the roar of the Red Line train heading toward MacArthur Park.

They had started off by driving to Union Station for a tour of the station. They hadn’t even realized that the Red Line train would be in business Saturday because the strike had throttled transit service. “We saw this thing was running and said, ‘Hey! Let’s do it!’ ” said Peter Jokanovich, 58 of San Pedro. His wife, Delia, smiled indulgently at him.

“We usually don’t venture east of La Cienega,” said Lisa Jokanovich, 33, who lives in West Hollywood.

But Jokanovich pere had already led his family through a Saturday morning tour of Downtown--through Pershing Square, the Biltmore Hotel and “once over lightly through the library” when they got to Union Station. The Metro was the perfect capper to his tour.

“I just wanted to introduce them to the Metro,” said Jokanovich, who grew up in Echo Park. “I wanted to show them how beautiful it is, how the trains are immaculate. You don’t see any graffiti. You don’t expect this in L.A., do you?”

“He does this quite often,” Christina said as her father, who works in industrial management, continued playing tour guide. “He has a regular job though.”

‘It’s Really Bad. . . . I Feel Trapped’

Dolores Alva was waiting with her granddaughter Maria Landeros outside the market at 5th Street and Broadway. She had been pleasantly surprised at how easy her commute from her home at 87th Street and Broadway had been, but Saturday had been an exception to the rule.

The strike, she said, “is affecting us in a bad way.” The 65-year-old religious educator has to go all over the city getting bargain-priced classroom materials. Her neighborhood, she said, has a dearth of bargains. But with the strike she has been kept from making shopping trips to discount stores in Huntington Park, and has dreaded the trip Downtown.

“It’s really bad,” she said, shaking her head. This was the first time this week she had come Downtown. “There are things that we need here, things that we can’t buy around” her home, she said as she boarded the No. 45 bus, hefting a full shoulder bag.

Alva, who has been relying on Los Angeles public transportation for 40 years, said the strike has marooned her. “I feel trapped, yes, because you can’t go all the places you want to go.”