Egged Buses (Day One)
The bus ride south to Ashkelon was unmemorable in its ordinariness. It was to become a route most often travelled as the years passed. Therefore to isolate that first journey from the wealth of later memories would be impossible. Nothing memorable happened. The bus left the Bus Station on time and headed out of the city. Most of the passengers fell asleep and I guess I sat and looked out of the window and watched this strange country unfold in front of my eyes. Like I said it was a trip I made many times and I have travelled that road many times since in cars, trucks, buses and even once on the back of a motorbike.
Nowadays long-distance travel seems to be plagued like everything else by mobile phones. Certainly, my last bus trip (2003) from Tel Aviv to Eilat was plagued by stupid ring tones and people talking to friends that they had just left at the last bus stop. I was certainly ready to kill someone and use the old ‘it was the voices what made me do it’ defence. Not sure what the current state of play is. I wonder of like many other transport companies Egged has taken an initiative and introduced ‘mobile free’ buses. If not then they should certainly examine the concept. But back in the golden days of 1987, the mobile phone was still the size of a small house and buses were little more than mobile dormitories, in as much as people got on the bus got themselves comfortable and were usually asleep before the bus reached the city limits. We had our own pet theory that Egged the bus company pumped a sleeping gas into the air conditioning system to make passengers fall asleep and thus prevent them panicking at some of their drivers exploits, but we were never able to prove this and I never caught the drivers wearing gas masks. (maybe they were immune to the gas or were actually aliens)
Ashkelon bus station was like Bus Stations all over Israel. All built to the same design. A line of Bus Stops along one side, under a concrete roof and usually backed by a selection of cafes and kiosks selling fast food and other items like cigarettes and newspapers. To the front, there was a large area where the buses could all swing around before lining up for the slot where they were stopping. Around the perimeter of this area were parking points for buses and drivers that were off duty and set down points where buses that were terminating could offload passengers. The whole place was busy and overcrowded, thick with the cloying stench of diesel fumes and the ubiquitous fragrance of fried food. To find the stop you want requires a trek down the line of bus stops until you locate the one you need. All we knew at that point was that we wanted the stop for Erez and sure enough at the far end, there was a stop for Erez and right next door to it another one marked Erez, but with a different bus number. We had been given the number by the helpful people in Tel Aviv, but hey they were miles away and Erez is Erez so what is the problem?
Most of the buses that serve the outlying communities are the same make and mark as the Intercity buses, reasonably new, air-conditioned and painted red, but we, who had only been in the country about eight hours were not to know this, therefore when what can only be described as a wheezing old charabanc painted blue and white, whose only attempt at air conditioning were the cracked or missing windows, turned up at the stop marked Erez, how were we to know any different. However, when we tried to board the bus the driver, who was an Arab, politely pointed out to us, in broken English, that we probably wanted the other Erez bus as this was the bus reserved for Palestinian workers returning to their homes in the Gaza Strip via the Erez crossing. So, we got off again, consulted the sign on the adjacent stop and discovered that there were several hours until the next bus departure to “our” Erez.
This gave us some time to kill so we trekked up the road to the local supermarket. The first of many such trips we made in search of the Holy Grail. This was not some jewelled cup but a clear glass bottle with a green top, the Elite Arak. Not sure when we would get a chance to buy more we invested in a small supply of several bottles and then to try and convince the staff at the checkout that we were not hopeless alkies we also picked up some interesting looking local chocolate bars. Then with our purchases safely stowed away out of sight, we trekked back to the Bus Stop to wait for the bus to Erez at 2:30.
When we arrived back at the bus station there was still a couple of hours to wait until the next bus and the lack of sleep, lack of food and too much booze was beginning to take its toll. We were bored and tired and to be honest I just wanted to get there now.
We were debating our various options when a helpful member of the public overheard our conversation and pointed out that many of the buses departing the station for destinations south of Ashkelon travelled along the main road and that any one of those would be happy to stop at the top of the road leading to the Kibbutz. We would have to walk down from the main road but it was not that far, even with all our luggage, and in the heat of the early afternoon sun, but as the Noël Coward song lyric points out.
“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”
So we took a chance and hopped on the next bus to Beersheba, asking the driver politely if he could drop us at the Erez turn off.
There was a famous photograph, sadly now missing, which we entitled “The Road to Nowhere.” The picture shows two guys from the back with ripped jeans and untucked shirts carrying guitar cases and walking off into the distance. It was taken on the approach road to Erez on that first day. It felt pretty good at the time. Real Rock and Roll. The camera was on a remote timer. The only problem was we had to walk back and pick the camera up along with the rest of our baggage and then continue on our hot a weary trek towards the settlement which seemed to be getting further away by the minute.
We had learnt another valuable lesson. What Israelis consider to be a short walk and what we might consider one were not mutually compatible.
Between 1967 and 2000 some 350,000 young people volunteered in Kibbutzim and Moshavim in Israel. I first joined them in 1987 and stayed for a few years. In my time there I met and talked with many volunteers and since returning home I have spoken to many more. In 2017 I marked the 30th Anniversary of my arrival by starting this blog and then as a tribute to all of you, the hard-working volunteers I decided to document some of your stories and the character of Billy Randell was brought to life.
Yeah, there are parts of me in Billy but there is an equal part of all of you who have shared your stories here and on other social media.
The Eilat Trap, A Pocketful of Charm and Khamsin are just the story so far. Billy will return…
