‘Awesomest guy ever:’ Kevin Eaton is No. 1 at STA

A few minutes before 8 one recent weekday morning, a little girl wearing a pink coat, pink cap and pink backpack stepped onto the North Side Route 21 bus and eyed driver Kevin Eaton.

“Where were you yesterday?” she asked.

There was a note of accusation in her tone.

Eaton explained that he had the day off.

The child weighed this and somewhat begrudgingly accepted his explanation. But everything about her demeanor made clear that Eaton was on notice. He shouldn’t make a habit of being absent.

People count on him, after all.

Not to worry. He has been driving a bus for a long time and shows no signs of giving it up.

“When I tell people I might retire, they say ‘Yeah, right.’ They think I’ll die in the saddle.”

Some of his fellow bus drivers have a nickname for him. They call Eaton “No. 1.”

That’s in recognition of the fact his 38 years behind the wheel put the 63-year-old North Side grandfather atop Spokane Transit’s seniority list of 248 drivers.

That means he gets first pick of which routes to drive, what shifts to take, when to schedule vacation and, well, virtually everything.

It also means he has pretty much seen it all.

“I’ve been spit at, shot at (BB gun), swore at, swung at and, well, you name it.”

But retire? “The problem is I think I’d miss it too much.”

Eaton tries to not let the occasional drunk or loudmouth shape how he views his passengers. They’re good people, he said, just trying to get from here to there.

And he’s their ride.

“The secret to longevity in a coach operator’s career is that he/she needs to love people,” said Steve Blaska, STA’s operations director. “It’s a common trait among all our senior operators, and true for Kevin. Operators must have the skill to deal with the entire spectrum of Spokane’s folks. Consequently they need to have an arsenal of roles to draw on: Happy greeters, referees, ambassadors, direction givers, listeners, sometimes disciplinarians … all while safely operating a coach. Having a good sense of humor helps. Kevin does all these things, and what keeps him going is that he realizes with all he is called to do, he is providing a valuable service to our community.”

A bus driver gets to know his regulars, said Eaton. “You hear about their good times and bad.”

He guesses that sometimes he’s the only person certain riders have to talk to.

In addition to his North Side route, Eaton drives one that goes to East Central and Spokane Valley. One reason he likes those is they are relatively flat. (Think hills and icy conditions.)

There’s a plaque in one of the buses attesting to his long record of safe driving.

If you pay your $1.50 fare and get him talking, you learn a few things.

He has a superstition about adjusting his mirrors. He knows exactly how long it takes to walk to the back of certain supermarkets and visit the restroom. And he savors the old Bob Newhart comedy routine, “Bus Drivers School.”

Eaton takes safe driving seriously. Always has. A younger sister was killed by a drunken motorist long ago in California.

When people ask him how he’s doing, he has a standard answer.

“Tired and cranky.”

He gets up at 3:45 in the morning on work days. By the time he heads home after his shift, he has greeted countless riders and been acknowledged in return.

“Thank you, man,” said a departing passenger last week who smelled like the smoke of a substance that’s legal in Washington.

He has been given cookies and cards. When his wife at the time died after an illness a few years ago, those who knew took note.

Occasionally he will defuse tension on the bus by calling on something he learned when he was a practicing Quaker. “I’ll say ‘Hey, friend…’ and that automatically seems to take things down a notch.”

Though born in Seattle, Eaton mostly grew up in Spokane. His family lived on 37th Avenue and he went to Ferris High School, before graduating from Washington State University with a criminal justice degree.

How he wound up driving a bus is sort of a long story. But perhaps it would suffice to say it was something that appealed to him as a kid back when people still knew who Ralph Kramden was.

He has been doing it since The Bee Gees had the No. 1 song with “Stayin’ Alive.”

He’s not a large guy. But he has big fans.

“He’s like the awesomest guy ever,” said Matt Tarr, a fellow STA driver. “Always smiling.”

Eaton trained Tarr’s now retired father as a bus driver back in the day.

Thirty-eight years. Think about it.

That’s a lot of time and a lot of miles navigating the potholed streets of Spokane.

What special hazards do you watch out for on the road?

“Old guys with Idaho plates.”

Pet peeves? “Bicycle riders in the downtown area really irritate me. None of them pay attention to traffic laws.”

Ever had careless drivers crash into your bus? “Several times.”

One collision left him with a shoulder injury.

What have passengers left behind on the bus?

Not long ago, he found and turned in $300 that had been jammed down in a seat.

Does he approve of the multiple video cameras on each bus?

Absolutely, yes.

What do motorists do that drives him crazy? “I think the worst thing about cars is they cut right in front of you and then hit the brakes.”

Just a few days after he said that, Eaton was driving the No. 94 route on Argonne Road when young guy in a red car recklessly swerved in front of the bus, forcing Eaton to urgently brake.

“One more gray hair,” he said to no one in particular.

Sometimes he has dreams about driving the bus.

To be sure, Eaton’s outlook isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. He once saw a woman on his bus smack a small child across the face and, as he tells it, he “about came unglued.”

His opinions don’t always line up perfectly with those of STA management.

For instance, he preferred making announcements himself to the current automated system they have now. The onboard robo-voice never refers, as he did, to the Plaza as “Spokane Transit’s World Headquarters.”

But he said his attitude about many aspects of bus driving is “Go with the flow.”

According to STA numbers, full time drivers make an average of a bit more than $47,000 a year.

Eaton said that when he was a young driver, older operators offered clear and contrasting examples of how to be and how not to be. He likes to think he chose the right role models.

STA’s chief executive, Susan Meyer, called Eaton “A genuinely nice person.”

Driving a bus isn’t his whole life, of course. Eaton has Spokane Chiefs season tickets. There are the kids and grandkids. And he actually enjoys long drives on vacations. Ask him about the trip to Moose Jaw.

But driving a bus is what he does. And no one currently at the STA has done it longer.

He will know when it’s time to call it a day, he said.

Until then, he will keep showing up with his Thermos of coffee and assortment of snacks and climb into a 40-foot bus.

That’s where he feels at home.

Waving to the STA drivers coming toward him. Listening to little girls in pink coats talk about animals. Lowering the front end of the bus, as if asking it to kneel, so an elderly rider can more easily step aboard.

He eases the big rig over to let someone off to go do battle with the day.

And he greets the people getting on. They can count on Kevin Eaton. He’s looking ahead and looking out for them.

“There’s always somebody at the next stop.”

Maybe he will retire this year or the next, he said.

Yeah, right.