Starting in first grade and continuing through most of my
public school career, I rode the bus to and from school nearly every day. It
came along the service road next to the highway and stopped at our street
around eight o’clock in the morning. I always tried to get down the street to
the corner a few minutes before that so I wouldn’t miss the bus. The few times
that happened, I had to trudge back up the hill to our house and my mother had
to take me to school, much to her annoyance.
The people who lived in one of the houses on the corner had a boat, and they
kept it in a shed that was fairly close to the road. The shed had no front, but
it had sides, a back, and a roof, so when it was raining, or very cold, the
kids waiting for the bus crowded into the shed for protection from the
elements. We had no trouble hearing the bus’s rumbling engine as it came along
the service road toward our street.
Most of the time we waited outside, though, and of course, being kids, we came
up with games to play. Since there was a ditch on both sides of the street, we
used the one alongside the boat shed for a game called “Quicksand Monster”. One
kid would get in the ditch and serve as the Quicksand Monster. The others had
to jump back and forth over the ditch while the Quicksand Monster tried to
catch one of them and haul him or her in. When that happened, the kid who got
caught became the Quicksand Monster, and so the game continued. I have no idea
who gave it that name, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me. I imagine other kids
in other places played variations of the same game, but I never heard or read
any other references to calling it Quicksand Monster.
The bus had already made three stops before it picked us up. After we got on,
it continued on up the service road, made one more stop at the corner of
another street, then turned, crossed over the highway, and headed back toward
town and the various schools. Some years, the bus I rode also made several
stops at a neighborhood on the other side of the highway to pick up the kids
who lived there, but when that happened we were really crowded in and really
had too many kids on there. I don’t recall that ever being a permanent
situation.
Most of the time, after making the one stop beyond our street, the bus returned
to the high school first to let off those kids, then cut through some back
streets and a residential area to get to the elementary school I attended.
Along the way we passed a big concrete watering trough on the corner of some
land where people kept cattle. I first noticed that watering trough in the fall
of 1959, when I was in first grade. I drive by there occasionally now, and I
always look over at it. The watering trough is still there—or at least it was
the last time I went by. That corner hasn’t changed in the almost sixty years
since then.
Anyway, as I got older, I began riding on past the elementary school to the
junior high, which was the last stop. The bus barn was located there. And
finally, when I reached high school, I got off at the first stop every morning.
The routine in the afternoon was much the same, except that route started at
the elementary school, went by the junior high, and then the high school last
before heading out the highway to the area where I lived. My street was the
fourth stop. The bus usually got there about five minutes until four o’clock in
the afternoon, which meant I could hurry up the street and get in the front
door in time to watch MIGHTY MOUSE or HUCKLEBERRY HOUND or THE ADVENTURES OF
SUPERMAN, whichever was running in that time slot that year. Much later, I made
sure I got home in time to watch reruns of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., which one
of the local stations showed every weekday.
I remember missing the bus in the afternoon only one time, and I couldn’t tell
you the reason why. But I was in high school, I know that (the old campus, the
one’s that now a junior high). It was about a mile and a half from my house, so
I decided to walk home instead of trying to call my mother and ask her to come
get me. It wasn’t a problem; I was young, and it was only a mile and a half.
And I remember enjoying that walk quite a bit. You see a lot of details when
you’re walking that you never notice when you’re riding in a bus. I got home
about half an hour later than usual, so I probably missed something on TV, but
I don’t think I cared. However, that was the only time I ever walked home, so I
didn’t enjoy it so much that I started doing it on a regular basis.
Over the years I rode various buses: 5, 15, and 33 are the only numbers I
recall. But they were all virtually identical, so it didn’t really matter. They
weren’t air-conditioned, of course, but we would let the windows down on hot
days. I had a few friends, some from my street and a few from the street where
the bus stopped just before us. I don’t recall ever being picked on, although
that certainly happened to some kids. Being a fat little nerd, I had learned at
a young age to keep my head down and be as invisible as possible in such
situations.
That’s the way my bus riding went until the first day of my junior year of high
school. The morning ride was normal, but that afternoon when I got on the bus
to go home, it followed such a long, circuitous route that it was 5:30 before I
walked in the door. Being accustomed to getting home by four o’clock, this
delay was flatly unacceptable. I needed
that hour and a half for reading comic books and paperbacks or watching TV or
playing football, baseball, or basketball. Since I had my driver’s license by
then, I asked my dad if I could have a car and start driving to school. He knew
a guy who had a used car lot (as I’ve mentioned before, no matter what you
needed, my dad Knew A Guy) and within days, I had a car. It was an olive-drab
Oldsmobile, a ’66 model, I think, ugly as sin and one step above a junker, to
boot. But it ran—most of the time—and I no longer had to ride the bus. That
led, the next school year when I was a senior, to the one, count it, one
semester of public school that I truly enjoyed, the second semester of my
senior year when I came in late and left early.
I wasn’t fond of riding the bus. I wouldn’t say that I absolutely hated it. Most days it was just part of
the overall experience of going to school, not really good or bad, just
something that had to be gotten through. But by the time my kids were school
age, Livia and I were both working at home as full-time writers, so we made our
own schedules and one of us was always able to take the girls to school and
pick them up. They rode buses for field trips and other extracurricular activities,
of course, but never to or from school. That was fine with me, because I always
enjoyed those trips with them. They may have missed a few experiences by not
riding the bus, but on the other hand, we listened to the radio and we waved at
the donkey in the field where we always turned and we went by the house where
all the weiner dogs lived and hoped they would be outside so we could see them
running around and playing. I hope those moments were worth something to the
girls. They certainly were to me. More than any bus ride I ever took.
