I don’t often indulge in retrospectives, but this year proved to be a titanic upheaval in the TriSec compound, so I can’t simply ignore it – despite my desperately wanting to.


The year started out with little promise or hope. I was still a trolley tour conductor, and lead dispatcher back at that other job. Things were not going well. I was picking up all the slack for a bad dispatcher, and as a result, I pretty much stopped giving tours. We also tried an experiment in the first quarter; we did not run full trolley tours on three days a week. We did scheduled tours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday – which sold poorly and nobody really liked.

In any case, things puttered along as best as they could. But then in mid-February, Papa TriSec got sick. One horrific morn, he did not respond to his “proof of life” text we sent each other every morning. I raced to his house – and found him in a diabetic trance on the floor. He recovered, but then this became more constant and alarming. We got the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” button for him, and somewhat reassured by this, I still made for Florida in early March to check on my other elderly relative in West Palm Beach.

The day after I arrived calamity struck – the LifeAlert team called me with a non-response, and pops landed in the hospital. It turns out he had a heart condition. His heart would randomly stop and restart, causing unconsciousness. We’re really lucky that it kept restarting or this story would be quite different. The solution was to have a pacemaker inserted. Which to my chagrin was going to take place at the worst hospital in the country. I won’t name it, but it services the towns of Melrose and Wakefield. This hospital infamously killed my mother back in 2016 due to their ineptitude.

But – all went well. Sort of. Surgery was a success, and then we decided that he couldn’t live alone anymore. We went to check out assisted living on his birthday, which was March 20. Except – he didn’t finish the visit. He took ill that afternoon, and after going to urgent care, he was immediately admitted to Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

He was having a DKA episode, which was brought on by the mismanagement of a UTI he got during catheterization for the pacemaker procedure. He wound up spending the next month in the hospital and almost died on two separate occasions. Fortunately, things got better.

In the meantime, my personal life was a shambles. Work suffered, Scouts suffered, Masons suffered, my home life suffered, everything that could possibly go wrong did during the months of April and May.

I had been considering quitting my trolley job for months, and I resolved to make a decision by July 4. We were relocating the base out of the city, and this would be before cruise season, so I could make a clean getaway.

It never got to that. In April, I was on staff at a scout event called Woodbadge. I was fortunate that one of my friends from another troop was a staff member that weekend. She’s a psychologist by trade, so I had a few pro-bono sessions around the campfire, and my path forward eventually became clear.

Tuesday, May 14 was the fateful day. I finally had enough; everything that could have gone wrong did, and I actually rage-quit. Slammed the clipboard down on the desk. Threw my water bottle on the floor, screamed “Today is the day, I QUIT!” I stormed out of the building, never to return.

I fulfilled my remaining responsibilities as I should, and June 1 was my last day driving tours in Boston. Maybe forever.

But my other gig turned out to be no picnic. Greener pastures they weren’t. I switched to full-time, and promptly started getting fewer hours than when I was part time. This went on for weeks. Finally, I called out dispatch, management, and HR in a room full of other drivers that I wasn’t getting any work. Naturally, they were all horrified – and my schedule was quickly fixed.

Ah, but then that sucked. Yankee Bus is the prime sub-contractor for the public transit agency in Boston. Whenever there is a shutdown, diversion, or other emergency – Yankee picks up the slack.

Which meant no charters. No transport. No tour groups. No nothing. Just incessant 12-hour days of “load and go”, with barely enough time to get a bottle of water or a bathroom break in between runs. Yankee also can’t dispatch their way out of a paper bag. Their solution for every problem is to throw another bus at it – which doesn’t always work.

Again I started looking, and then things dramatically turned around. I got an interview with Boston Coach, another bus company in town. The hiring manager told me they were looking for somebody to drive a college campus shuttle. At Bentley University in Waltham.

I can see the campus of Bentley from my bathroom window.

It was a total no brainer, and also a game-changer.

Consider: I walk to work now. I drive in my neighborhood. I drive in front of my house ten times a day. I can actually go home for lunch. And I don’t have to deal with stupid tourist questions anymore, city traffic, cruise ships, none of this.

Paraphrasing and reversing the blog Patron Saint, “Less Weight”.

So the semester is done. We’re on winter break until January 6. Despite Yankee’s problems, it’s still a good part-time gig, so I’m still driving there. I just planned my annual trip back to Florida, which will be after graduation in the spring.

And there is always Scouting and Masonry. I’ve just been named Assistant Scoutmaster of Program for the spring Woodbadge course. Essentially Assistant Course Director, and I have just been promoted at my Masonic Lodge, too. Moving up to Senior Deacon in February.

Mrs. TriSec is much happier as well. I’m home at night. I don’t come home all surly and mean. There was a time that I regret I think she was afraid of me. I even stopped drinking for a few months over the summer.

2025?

Well, November 5 spoiled the next four years for about half the country. We’ll have to see what it all brings, but for right now…

HAPPY NEW YEAR from Your Loyal TriSec, and indeed – all your friends here at Four Freedoms Blog!

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