11/19/2018

A busman's holiday and the Battle of Philly

What is a busman's holiday?

For this busperson it was a very relaxing weekend. And the most relaxing hours were spent at my computer doing pretty much the same thing I do forty hours a week for peanuts and benefits; sorting, describing, categorizing a body of creative work so the individual pieces can be accessed in the future. Why my digital nature photos might be accessed is not the concern at this moment, but perhaps the subject collections will lead to new creative endeavors.

So: noun: busman's holiday
  1. a vacation or form of recreation that involves doing the same thing that one does at work.

I always associate the idiom busman's holiday with "The Honeymooners," going for a weekend ride with driver Ralph Cramden, wife Alice, and the Nortons, Ed and Trixie. In the early Sixties Dad would set the black and white tv on the kitchen high stool for viewing during Saturday night supper. We didn't become a two-car family until about 1965, so Dad rode the bus to work.

Twenty-plus years earlier, Dad had a different bus experience as a sleep-deprived armed guard on the Philadelphia transit system during the "Battle of Philly."  This may have been his introduction to civil rights issues as a young white man from a rural mid-America community.





© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder

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