B often involves many stops at small-town stations like this one. One couple traveled with their five children, ages 2 to 10, who passed the time snacking and fidgeting quietly with the beads in their hair. The family was returning from a visit with relatives in Chicago. Their trip home would end up taking 30 hours. Candi has traveled by bus between Pensacola and Panama City each week for more than a year.
Smoke curls from a butt smoldering in a nearby garbage can ashtray.
It's filled with stubbed-out cigarettes, many of them tipped with scarlet lipstick. There's another reason Reba Rae hopes Candi's bus arrives soon. We gotta be onstage at 11 o'clock. It takes Reba Rae 90 minutes to get ready - a little longer than most drag queens, she says, because instead of wearing a wig, she styles her own hair. The next morning she'll be a man again, installing drywall.