Bus # 10


One year when my brother and I were in grade school Mom and Dad found themselves in a fix. Mom had left school teaching a few years before to work as a bank teller. Between the end of school and the time she got off work we needed a babysitter. The stay-at-home mom who lived near the school that had been watching us had moved away with her family. Who could keep us now?

Fortunately Dad had a solution. The previous year he had quit laying bricks for a while during the school year (when work was slow anyway) and had taken a job as a school bus driver. We could ride the bus with him all the way to the end of his route and back. Dad had previous experience and was one of the district’s best drivers. They had given him one of the longest and roughest routes. That year we would spend more time on the bus than probably any other kids in town.

Mom took us to school each morning on her way to work as usual. When school let out we boarded Dad’s Bus # 10 and pulled out of the grade school’s bus lot, past the long row of mothers and grandmothers waiting to pick up their children, and headed across town to the middle school. From there we traveled a few blocks to the high school. At each place some kids got off and others got on. By the time we left the high school the big Ward bus (made in Conway, Arkansas—Dad had briefly worked at their plant when he and Mom were first married) had a very full load.

The first few stops on the east end of town eased the crowding considerably. The bus rolled across the city limits and dropped off the riders on a short stretch of dead-end road. We then turned around ran down a connector street to a longer county road. All through this area were lots of new houses with young families. By the time we got onto the county road the bus was half empty. But the route was just getting started.

From here on the houses became scattered. Ironically we passed our own new family home. We were too young to drop off there by ourselves. The narrow road ran on and on through miles of woods, mostly pines with a sprinkling of other trees and an abundance of undergrowth. I remember early that school year seeing lots of blackberries in the woods and wishing that I could pick some. Here and there a house and yard broke the walls of woods lining the road. In a few places there was a remnant of the open pasture and fields that had covered much of the area within living memory. One of the nicest-looking houses sat on a knoll between two handsome mature oaks, overlooking a grassy hollow with a pretty little stock pond at the bottom. We saw cows there sometimes. The road passed a cemetery, a creek, and a small brick church on a hill.

Our journey was a noisy one, and not just because of the kids. The roar of the bus’s engine and tires made it hard to carry on a conversation. The bus rattled constantly along the rough county road, punctuated with loud crashes when a wheel hit one of the frequent deep potholes. After the bus reached the end of the pavement and ran onto gravel, the rattling turned into a continual rumble. In dry weather the bus trailed a huge plume of dust.

About ten miles out of town we deposited off the last rider on that road and headed back toward town. We could not go back home yet, though. A handful of students still had miles to go. A couple of miles back down the road there sat a small church house which no longer exists. Across the road from it we turned onto a cutoff that connected this county road with another one to the south. The gravel cutoff road ran a good four or five miles through steep, hilly country. Only one family lived in this whole area.

East of the cutoff stood Bull Mountain. The “mountain” was really a tall hill that rose above the surrounding mass of hills. Atop Bull Mountain stood a forestry tower. The ranger who kept the tower lived with her family in a small house at the tower’s base. Getting her daughter and son home meant leaving the cutoff and crossing about two miles of primitive track. The bus bounced over ruts and had just enough room between the trees to pass. Sometimes branches scraped it. The only structure along the trail was a sheet-metal shack that served as a no-frills hunting lodge. One week during deer season a student who did not normally ride the bus used it to join his family at the lodge.

Near the top Bull Mountain did get steep enough look a bit like an actual wooded mountain top. Fortunately the drive looped around the tower. It would have been impossible to turn the bus around otherwise. We dropped off the two passengers and then carefully ground back down the trail to the cutoff.

By the time we reached the other county road and turned east, the few remaining passengers had relaxed. Bus rules were fairly lax in those days. We could sit where we wanted, talk to friends, or stretch out as long as nobody got too rambunctious. Dad would see to it that this did not happen often!
One chilly day a kid got sick and forced Dad to stop and clean up the mess. We had to ride with windows open and letting in drafts for a while. An older boy complained of having to play “freeze out” because some little kid had thrown up.

A couple of wooded miles past the south end of the cutoff the countryside opened up a bit into fields and pastures surrounding a scattering of houses. Remarkably this outpost was not the most isolated community in the district. It was close.

By the time we dropped off the last passenger we were about eighteen miles out of town. Dad, my brother, and I rode back to town by ourselves. It was the longest and quietest part of the whole trip.
Back at the bus garage Dad usually spent a while visiting with the district’s bus supervisor. We kids sometimes wandered around the garage. It was one of the biggest buildings we had ever been in, dark and dusty and greasy. We gawked at the assorted tools and bus parts and tried to stay out of the way. Sometimes Dad parked us in a little office out to the side and bought us a soft drink from the garage’s vending machine. I sometimes chose something called Red Hog, a more-or-less strawberry-flavored drink with a rampant Arkansas razorback hog on the label. I have never seen the drink anywhere else.
Then it was time for Mom to get off work, and we went home. We would say hello to Mom, and she would start supper. On Fridays she had to work late at the bank to handle the payday crowd, and Dad would sometimes cook supper.

The following year Mom left the bank and returned to work as a schoolteacher. She has taught either high school or college ever since. The year after that, Dad left his bus route and returned to bricklaying full time. We now only had to ride to the high school. There we could sit around Mom’s class room while she took care of after-school business, reading books from the collection of paperbacks on her classroom’s shelves. I much preferred that to riding all that way on the bus. Looking back, though, I’m glad I had that year of bus riding. I got to see a lot that year.