MAPLE CREEK MEMORIES XIV

BIG YELLOW SCHOOL BUS

Part V


The school board, in its' infinite wisdom, attempted to send me and a group of other kids in the neighborhood to Southern Junior High one year. None of us had been made aware of it prior to school starting so we naturally rode the bus to our regular school the first day. We were all called to the principals office at the start of the day and were given notes to take home to our parents informing them that we had been transferred to Southern for that year. We were not allowed to attend classes that day so we all ended up spending the day at the local library.

The note directed us to catch Shorty's bus the next morning. We did, and attended classes at Southern that day. During the day, the parents of each of us went to the board and had us transferred back to our regular school. All except me. We did not have a car and so my parents were unable to get into town until they could get a neighbor to drive them in. So I attended Southern for two more days, hated it, and my parents sent me back to the regular school again. Of course, as I was enrolled at Southern, I still could not attend classes at the regular school and I spent most of the day in the principals office that day. The following day I returned to Southern and my parents shanghaied Harry to take them into town. I returned to my regular school the next school day and finished junior high there.

As my tenure at Southern was so short, I really didn't get much out of the experience, but I did learn that you did not have to keep your eyes open to drive. Why I ever noticed this I cannot say, but at every curve on the road we came to, Shorty would close his eyes. Now I do not mean that he would blink. A blink only lasts a blink, less than a half second. But Shorty would close his eyes the moment we started into a curve and keep them closed until we were coming out of it. Maybe he was just resting his eyes, but it scared me. One morning we were headed south on the hard road and were approaching a long but fairly sharp curve, just south of Jones Creek Road. As we started into the curve, I glanced up into the mirror and Shorty had his eyes closed.
I began counting and it was one, two, three, four seconds and his eyes popped open and then shut again for a count of three and we were out of the curve and on the long straight stretch. All the way on the straight, he simply blinked his eyes, but he did his closing act again on the curve at the bottom of the hill, too. That got me curious, I guess, and I began watching him, and it happened on every curve. I couldn't wait to get off that bus. Fortunately, I had only one more day on his bus. He drove bus for all his life and as far as I know, he never had a wreck. But that was scary.

What bugged me most as a kid was that we got to school at about 8:10 AM for the start of school at 8:00AM. Not a good sign, and then we had to wait in the evening until Shorty had completed all his other runs from town over Lower Buck Creek, through Bugtown and over Hardy Creek. We were the add-on to his route (he lived in our neighborhood.) And he was irritated that the route had been added. And it was really galling to him I guess when, after only one day, I was the only passenger he had on the route. So he got there about 4:15 PM, and I was the only person left around the school when he got there, everyone else had gone home by 3:30 or 3:45 PM. My brothers had ridden the bus home from high school and had gotten home about 3:30 PM and I never made it until about 4:30 PM.

Oh, and as a side note, about three weeks after I had gone back to my regular school, my parents got a letter from the school board that told them that the board was considering transferring me to the town school because of the lateness of the driver getting home in the evenings, and the extended length of the runs he was making. The board asked if that would be acceptable to my parents. Now that was really strange, as I was already back at my regular school, had been for three weeks and Shorty was complaining about the length of his run? Was he really still making that morning run? That had to be the only one in contention since the evening pickup only took him off the hard road long enough to make the pick up and return to the hard road and continue on to his home, dropping me off at the road I lived on. I never got the straight of it. It didn't matter to me, I was back where I wanted to be anyway.

As can be imagined, we had a lot of fun while riding back and forth to and from town. One of the real joys was the Sandy bridge. I noted in the paper a few months ago that they are still arguing about whether to demolish that old bridge, since they built a new one about four years ago. Some folks are saying it is an historic bridge, while others, like me, say blow it away as it is an obstruction in the river. I have no idea who is going to win that argument. As far as I am concerned, it should have been replace about fifty years ago.

At that time, the road made a sharp right turn onto the bridge, regardless of which direction you were going. The road was so narrow and the approach so short that there was only room for the bus, barely, to make the turn onto the bridge by going off onto the dirt on the west side, or almost scraping a tree on the east side. The west side was also a blind entrance as there was a store building on that side. The bridge was a one lane bridge so there was the constant occurrence of having to back up if there happened to be another vehicle on it at the time of your approach. This could occur on both approaches due to the store on one side and the presence of high brush and trees on the other blocking the view until you swung onto the bridge.

The bridge was old and not structurally sound most of the time. We had it both ways during my school bus years--there were times when it was judged to be sound and we drove right on across, and there were other years when it was judged so unsafe that we were forced to get off and walk across while the driver waited until we had crossed before he would bring the bus across, where we would reload. And, of course, there were the car and truck drivers that were in such a rush to get across that they would pull out onto the bridge while we were making our walk across, and the driver would be forced to back up to allow them to pass, as he usually pulled right up to the bridge before letting us off. That could get a little tricky as there were always vehicles following the bus, and they had to back up also.

I never like heights. So it was terrifying for me to walk across that bridge. At one time, the bridge still had the wooden plank flooring so it wasn't too terribly bad, except where boards were missing. And there were a lot of missing boards and broken boards that would trip you. Then, they stripped the boards and left only the steel mesh flooring. Now that was really scary to me. You could look down through the steel grid and see the river flowing by underneath you. When the water was at its' regular flow, it wasn't so bad, but when we had floods, and we had them often, I was absolutely terrified to make that walk. And when there was ice on the steel gridwork, it was doubly scary.

When a river rises, a normally placid stream can make a terrific noise. The river was usually contained into its' banks and was only a couple hundred feet wide. When it was in flood it was from one high bank to the other high bank, completely covering the fields under the bridge, and sometimes rose to where it was only eight or ten feet below the deck of the bridge. And sounded like a freight train going by underneath you. At those times, even some of the older kids wee scared to walk across it. So we ran. And as we ran we could see all the trees and trash floating by just under our feet, and hear that loud sucking sound of the water as it rushed by. Brush, trees, chairs, sofas, jugs, cans, you name it, all went by in the more than yearly flushing of the valley.

We got to walk across that old bridge come rain or shine, snow, sleet, ice, whatever. And it was not a pleasing experience. I always felt bad for those kids who had to cross bridges like we did , after I got out of school and was a little older. You could never wear good clothing to school since you didn't know what the weather was going to be like. But you wore the best shoes you could afford to keep out the water. The crossing always added an extra ten minutes to the trip. And, on the way home, we would unload, cross the bridge, reload and then drive fifty yards or so to the Sandy Elementary school and pick up the kids there to take them on home.

We were a pretty close-knit group of kids. Riding the same bus for six years with the same group of kids will do that. We generally looked out for each other at school. Fight one, fight them all. Occasionally, however, just as in most families, there would be a dispute that boiled over now and then. Most of the time these were little tiffs that were settled with just some mean talk back and forth, either at school or somewhere else, but sometimes they would erupt into something a little rougher.

And who knows what starts a fight--jealousy, a boy, a word twisted, gossip--two girls from out on Ferguson Ridge had been slinging words back and forth for a while, with murderous looks, and then one had had enough. The fight started while the bus was in motion and the driver failed to notice it until it was full blown. When he did realize what was occurring, he immediately pulled to the side of the road, but by that time the hair pulling, slapping, gouging and yanking at various parts of the anatomy was in full force. It took him a minute or so to get them apart, with all the clawing, biting and anything else to get an advantage. The penalty ended up being both of them sitting on the front seat of the bus for a while, a short while, a week or so, and everything was calm and back to normal again. As far as we all knew it went no farther, the school administration was never informed about the incident.

Gosh, I can't remember whether it was the eighth or ninth grade when this occurred. My cousin and I had the same home room teacher. At that time, we ended the school day by going to home room for dismissal. She and I drew the daughter of the principal for our home room teacher, a dried up old prune, probably about forty, looked sixty, and she knew who her father was. She taught English and was dry as toast in class.

Our bus was always the first to leave the junior high school, as it had to go back through town to pick up the high school kids. It was late winter, early spring, and we had all attended a basketball game in the gymnasium that afternoon. It ran a few minutes late and we were all late getting back to home room. The teacher called the roll, then made announcements, ad nauseam, until I told her that we had to go, that our bus would leave without us. She replied that no bus ever left the school without all the students being aboard to which I replied that that was not true, that ours left at the appointed time, students aboard or not. Of course, that precipitated another long tirade about what students knew and what truth really was. Despite all that, I pointed to our bus just making the turn down the street to head back to the high school.

The teacher said she would call the high school and tell them to hold the bus there until we could get there, as it was only a short walk--yeah, all the way across town, about twelve blocks or so. we asked for a ride over there, but to no avail, we had to hoof it. We got our things together and started. My cousin and I ran practically all the way, but as we started up the alley to where the bus was parked, the bus pulled out, heading towards the Sandy Road.

What to do, what to do? We talked for a minute or so, and decided to hoof it on home if necessary. My folks did not have a car. Her family had one, but her Dad worked evening shift and was at work by that time. No one was left at the high school, we tried all the doors, even the guys in the bus garage were gone. We got out to the Sandy Road and had walked probably a hundred yards when an older fellow, probably in his sixties, came along in a ten-ton flatbed farm truck. He stopped and asked where we were headed. I told him and he said he was headed that direction, to climb aboard, that he was going to turn off onto another road than that which we were going , but that it didn't make any difference to him how he got where he was going, and that he would try to catch up with the bus for us. Like manna from heaven.

We thought we would be able to get on the bus at the Sandy Elementary, but the bus left just as we came off the bridge. We followed it on out to the hard road, but the road was clear and the bus pulled out before he could get the driver's attention. A few stops up the road was where my cousin normally got off the bus, so she got out when the bus stopped in front of us. I stayed in because it was only about two miles on to where I could get on the bus at the Maple Creek Elementary School. And if I didn't make it onto the bus, it was only about three quarters of a mile farther to my house. When the bus stopped at Maple Creek Elementary, I got on with the elementary kids and everyone kept asking where I had been. And I had a tale to tell them.

When we got to school the next morning, our home room teacher sent us to the office. The principal said he had a note that we were not on the bus the afternoon before and he wanted to know why. we both spoke up and told him the same story, about how we thought his daughter was responsible. He said that was not the story he had gotten but he would look into it. She and I both had assumed we were going to get paddled for the way we talked about his daughter, but it didn't happen. When we got into homeroom that afternoon we were dismissed but were told we needed to go to the principals office. We thought, uh, oh, we've had it now. He handed us a letter to take to our parents in which he apologized for the incident, accepting all the blame.