The Central Bus Station in Romema, mid-1980s,
Another Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem.
The Romema Central Bus Station served for years as the city’s sole terminal for public transportation out of Jerusalem.
A cramped and filthy compound, with cracked, wobbling black tiles underfoot, and two greasy falafel joints at the entrance.
At the heart of it all was the passenger information booth, staffed by impatient women behind glass, sporting Ora Namir-style hairdos and heavy makeup that melted and smudged in the heat.
Stray strands of hair blew romantically in the breeze from the rattling fan, while they handed out printed brochures listing that day’s routes and schedules.
And a pencil.
As befits the start-up nation. Just outside the entrance, on Jaffa Street, stood an ATM the pride of Jewish ingenuity.
Soldiers lucky enough to get leave on a Friday after long stretches in the field had to bring the company sergeant on Sunday a printed note from the ATM, showing the exact time their punishment had ended on Friday.
Egged’s dispatchers the celebrities of their time roamed the station with puffed chests, striking the pose of heirs to Alain Delon:
Egged cap with a visor, a tiny mustache above the lip, button-down shirt open to the navel, gold chain on a hairy chest, and of course the long pinky nail, a must-have accessory for drivers and dispatchers.
It felt like if, God forbid, the pinky nail broke, the owner would be granted immediate leave until it grew back.
Samson had his hair; back then, our guys had their pinky nails.
After buying a ticket in a long, sweaty line, you’d join another line waiting for the bus to pull into the “platform” (yeah, right) — basically a lane between two sidewalks and a metal fence.
All the buses were old and wheezing, fueled by gasoline or diesel, belching thick black smoke into the air first into the passenger’s lungs, and whatever wasn’t inhaled drifted into the nearby homes.
If the Ministry of Environmental Protection had shown up back then and tested the air quality, the area would’ve been declared a hazardous pollution zone, immediately shut down, bombed from the air by B2s, and sealed under two meters of concrete.
Back when Jerusalem was still Jerusalem,
we used to travel to the big city in our teenage years
the Tel Aviv Metropolis, where the central station competed in grime and chaos with Jerusalem’s.
There were sellers hawking bootleg cassettes of Mizrahi singers, who were just starting to break into the Israeli music scene completely absent from the buttoned-up, square radio stations.
Except for one corner of airplay on Friday mornings
“Chai Corner” the soundtrack to cooking and mopping, to holding the squeegee and swaying your Mediterranean hips side to side.
If you wanted to hear Zohar Argov, you had to go to Tel Aviv and buy a plastic cassette with a brown tape reel, in a blurry, faded cover photo.
If the cassette was bad quality, or your tape player was acting up, you’d twist the cassette’s reels with a pencil.
Even the tech trailblazers who had Walkmans would do the same, to save batteries manually rewinding the tape by pencil, from here to the moon.
At Tel Aviv’s central station, you could also get the latest global hits.
Three for ten, just for today Fake, shamelessly so, with grainy amateur cover photos.
So Samantha Fox looked like Yaffa from the bank,
Depeche Mode resembled a group of hooligans from Holon, and Julio Iglesias looked like a sunburned French tourist who passed out on the beach mid-August, and woke up dazed two days later to the sound of Agadoo doo doo.
A falafel stand reeking of exhaust fumes, a juice stand with radioactive neon colors,
and public restrooms potent enough to restore a lost sense of smell.
We’d come home from our sweaty, sooty Tel Aviv outing happy and proud ,proud Jerusalemites returning home, climbing the Castel (The first hill outside of Jerusalem), hoping the driver wouldn’t burn out the brakes on the descent into Motza, but would still take it fast enough to build momentum for the uphill stretch.
We’d see the “Welcome to Jerusalem” sign, neatly trimmed into the hillside on the right,
get off the bus, and thank the heavens for the city’s cool, clean air the city that, back then, was the center of the world.
Back in those good old days,
Tel Avivians and Haifans looked at Jerusalemites with a kind of reverent awe like those who know things.
That was before Tel Aviv became what it is today.
But let’s be honest after all those Jerusalemites who rolled down the Castel and into Tel Aviv more than two decades ago, bringing with them salted green almonds and a strong, high-quality boost to a city that’s all traffic, no parking, and constant sweat well, it’s no wonder.
Memories from a time that won’t return,
and from Jerusalem — once the finest jewel in Israel’s crown.
Wishing a peaceful Shabbat to those near and far from Jerusalem,
May our kidnapped brothers return home safely, along with IDF soldiers,
and may we merit true unity among ourselves.
Photo: Yonatan Loirer
