The white van hasn't even left the cement and tinted-glass workscape of a Cobb County office park. Yet the banter of the afternoon commute is in full gear.

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Jessica McGowan/AJC (ENLARGE)

Passengers (from left) Wanda Reddick, Carolyn Foster and Sid Wade laugh and converse during a van pool commute from Cumberland Galleria to their homes around Newnan.

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The subject: Sandy Moore's legendary driving. Moore, the van pool's morning driver, has been accused of being a "tooter" at the wheel.

"Sandy will say 'Did you see what he just did?' " says Monica Askew, who takes over driving duties in the afternoons. Then she'll "toot, toot on that horn."

Everyone on board breaks into laughter.

Welcome to the "Don't Worry Be Happy" van pool, a shadow family built on a love of good laughs and a disdain for driving solo through the nation's second-worst traffic. Every morning, the 11 van-poolers hop aboard in Newnan and Union City, then complete the 50-mile journey around the western edge of Atlanta to the Cumberland Galleria area.

The van's bright yellow license plate features a smiley face with hat turned sideways. "Don't Worry Be Happy," it smirks, seeming almost cocky amid cars from Gwinnett, Henry and other counties a monster commute away from the mid-rise office buildings at I-75 and I-285.

Smiling faces populate the van's interior, too. The monthly cost — thanks to subsidies and free maintenance — is just $50 each.

The riders are Atlanta old-timers and New York natives, computer analysts and insurance adjusters, young and old, black and white, suburbanites and exurbanites. Each has taken a solemn oath to show up on time each morning and afternoon, pump gas on occasion and, perhaps most importantly, check any grumpiness at the van doors.

"You have to be able to get along and talk with people," Moore says. "It's like a marriage."

These van-poolers celebrate their anniversary with a luncheon every October. And each time there's a birthday, Askew's mother cooks a lemon pound cake. The riders send each other get-well cards. And when Moore had to tend to her ailing husband, everyone chipped in to cover her monthly fee and buy the family meals.

The van pool even had its first baby and grandbaby last year — both boys.

Moore, who drives each morning, is the self-described "Mother Hen." The patriarch, by default, is Sid Wade. On the road with 10 women, he's the lone "man-pooler." Even the van's smiley face has long girly eyelashes.

Wade feels a little out of place when the conversation turns to breast-feeding. "But," he says with a don't-count-me-out wag of the finger, "I was a computer analyst at Playtex."

Wade entertains as the van hits its first rough patch: a sea of brake lights where the Perimeter meets I-20. He notes that not everyone who spots the smiley face plate in their rear view mirror gets a cheery feeling inside. "We've had a few California waves," he says.

Perhaps those drivers, stressed out and guzzling gas, are a bit jealous of commuters with matching happy face umbrellas.

But for all the harmony, Wade, Moore and several others admit to a van pool divorce. They don't like to talk about it. The split was messy.

That's the thing about cramming a dozen folks into a tight space and making them dependent on one another. The relationship can be rocked by personality clashes, loud cellphone yapping and louder snoring.

But the riders in van No. 24563 know rich rewards can await, too.

Wanda Reddick says she grudgingly left her Acura SUV behind, expecting the van pool experiment to fail.

"I like getting out at lunch," says Reddick, an Allstate worker from Fayetteville. "All I could think was 'I'm going to be stuck in that building all day.' "

Then her gas and car maintenance bills plummeted. Reddick was saving lunch money, too. All this while spending time with fun folks who don't just accept back-seat driving but consider it a sport. "I love it," she says. "I can't believe it, but I do."

Wade raises his eyebrows. Reddick's in it for the Chick-fil-A, he says. "If we go to Chick-fil-A in the morning, she takes my biscuit."

Reddick feigns shock. "I do?"

Wade nods.

"Oh, yeah, I do."

The happy-go-lucky crowd drops Reddick and two others by their cars at Union Station, a mall in Union City. Then it's smooth sailing down I-85. City gives way to country, cement barriers to picket fences.

The commute slows to a crawl on a two-lane road, approaching the Baptist church where the van pool breaks up.

Carolyn Foster, a "Don't Worry Be Happy" original, will drive the van back to her house, where she has the extra space to park it.

Askew, born and raised in LaGrange, will begin the second leg of her journey, 40 more miles to the town she never wants to leave.

Wade, who jokes about fencing off his native Coweta County to keep out newcomers, has a short drive home. So does Moore, who jumped out from Forest Park for a chance at four acres.

The van pulls into the church lot, an hour after it left Cobb. The van-poolers scatter into their own cars.

Then Moore, realizing she forgot something, flags down Wade.

Foster can't bring the van back to the church tomorrow, she says, so Wade will have to pick it up.

Moore hands him a spare key, that piece of sparkling silver that will keep the van-poolers together until retirement, a new work shift or some other commute-altering change does them part.