Bus driver Mickey Mahan starts his day by picking up feathers in the Centro bus garage and putting them in his pocket.

Later, he’ll glue them to other objects he finds on the street. He also picks up leaves, newspapers, coffee grounds and postcards and glues them to boards.

Very few would expect Mahan to be a standout member of the Syracuse University community. To most students, the bus drivers are only people who drive from point A to point B.

Mahan isn’t that bus driver. He’s the one who wears a feather in his cap and sings the names of the bus stops.

Before Mahan began working for Centro in 1991, he earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from La Salle University. Beginning in the 1985-86 academic year, he began working on his master’s degree in English literature from SU.

After one year, he took three years off to work at a hot dog cart and then returned back to SU to finish his degree. He taught at SU for three years, but realized it didn’t suit him.

“At the end of the third year, I discovered that it really wasn’t what I wanted to do,” Mahan said.

That’s when he found a part-time bus driver position with Centro. After one memorable layover at the Goldstein Student Center on South Campus, Mahan keeps the feathers as a trademark to his Centro uniform.

“One morning, after I started working up on the Hill, I picked up some feathers and just put them in my pocket with no real idea of what I would do with them,” Mahan said. “I got off at Goldstein and went in to use the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘That blue hat could use a little something.’ So I took a feather out of my pocket and stuck it in the brim of the hat. I thought it looked spiffy.”

Mahan said he never thought much of it until students asked him why he wore a feather in his hat. He says it keeps him lighthearted and that if he keeps a feather close to him, he will always think to himself, “Sky’s the limit.”

Centro bus drivers are required to announce certain stops on their routes. After a couple of days doing this, Mahan, who sings in his free time, thought it was boring. He decided to start singing the names of the bus stops to make his job more exciting.

“It took a considerable amount of courage to actually work up the nerve to (start singing),” Mahan said. “Once you sing something, it kind of opens up the space and elevates the space. It makes people feel a little better. It makes me feel a lot better. It’s a way of opening up communication with people on the bus and it takes it to another level.”

Mahan also builds relationships with students who ride his bus. As students exit the bus and say thank you to Mahan, he addresses select students by name. Sophomore management and finance dual major Steve Pincus lives on Winding Ridge and, in his first two months as a South Campus resident, has already built a friendship with Mahan.

“He knows my name, shakes my hand and cries out, ‘Hey Steve how ya doin,’ every time I have the good fortune to step on his bus,” Pincus said. “Me and Mick go way back.”

Junior psychology major Jasmine El Nabli feels Mahan tries to make his job fun for himself and his riders. She particularly enjoys it when he drives her to Main Campus in the morning because he leaves her with a positive attitude to start her day.

“He genuinely seems to enjoy his job and incorporates his interests into bus driving,” El Nabli said. “He makes it fun for himself by singing the names of the bus stops and occasionally interacting with students on the bus.”

But when he is not driving around campus and singing the names of the bus stops, Mahan is an avid poet and bookworm.

Four years ago at the Barnes and Noble on Erie Boulevard, Mahan found love. He proposed to Deb Thorna, who currently works as a clerk at the Petit Branch Library, a branch of the Onondaga County Public Library System.

“He slides this little ring box across the table and I thought, ‘Really?’” Thorna said.

Mahan had an answer for that.

“I was going to get down on my knee, but the floor was dirty,” said Mahan.

Instead of a traditional wedding, Mahan and Thorna eloped in Las Vegas. Their wedding day attire: matching sailor shirts and khakis.

Mahan and Thorna say they are very similar people. They are both artists and singers, but most importantly, they like to have fun and keep tradition. They usually spend Sunday mornings having breakfast and coffee at the same Barnes and Noble where they were engaged.

Thorna says she serves as his secretary.

“He still needs to be dragged into the 20th century,” she said. “I do all the technical stuff. ‘This is how to use a cellphone, this is how to send an email.’ We contribute different things, but we are similar people in a lot of ways. We both really like to have fun.”

Thorna helped coordinate Mahan’s “Poetry Bash,” held at the Petit Branch Library on Oct. 27. More than 30 people attended the event, which was highlighted by Mahan’s entrance on a pogo stick.

Even while Mahan is driving north and south on Comstock Avenue, he writes poetry. During layovers at Goldstein Student Center, he stops to write down the lines in a small book he keeps in his pocket.

He said he loved his job for the first 15 years and it helped him find his inner self.

“For the first 15 years, you couldn’t have given me any other job on the planet,” he said.

But he said he senses this chapter in his life may be ready for an end soon.

Said Mahan: “I’ve been there 20 years. I’m ready to move on. I feel like I’ve taken it as far as I can go. It’s not that I don’t like the job, but I need a new adventure.”

Published on November 7, 2012 at 5:52 am

Contact Austin: arpollac@syr.edu