Did You Have a Memorable Childhood Experience of Riding the School Bus?

my own photo

It's back to school time and the orange buses are prevalent once again during their morning and afternoon routes. Sitting behind one on the highway yesterday I was reminded of my own school bus riding days.

When I was 8 to 10 years old we lived in a very rural area in an old farmhouse. We were probably just above the poverty level and had very few amenities. The cooking and heating came from the huge wood stove in the kitchen. Bathwater was hand-pumped into a claw-footed bathtub and you carried buckets of it to be heated on the stove. The restroom facilities were located in the "outhouse". You get the picture. Or maybe if you're quite a bit younger than me, you don't get the picture, and cannot imagine such things.

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My grade school was about 15 miles away and I was the 2nd child on the bus in the morning and the next to last one to get off the bus in the afternoon. This meant an early start to my day with the bus arriving at 7:15 am and a fairly long ride to get to school.

I knew every stop and every rider and spent over 2 hours a day in close quarters with them. Which brings me to the Bus Driver of this entire time. Mr. Carrico, a gentleman with little patience and no love of children. A man of seemingly limited intellect and an obvious lack of personal hygiene. A man most unsuited for a school bus driver, but times were hard then and I assume he had a family to support.

What I most remember about Mr. Carrico was his method of getting the attention of unruly, loud, or boisterous children. I don't recall the bus being a wild riot of misbehavior but Mr. Carrico liked his quiet and calmness. Something not always in evidence with a load of 20-30 children from ages 5 - 15 who'd been sitting in a bus for over an hour. But Mr. Carrico didn't believe in shouting at us for our attention, he was a man who believed in action rather than words. His reaction to hearing too much noise or looking up in that big overhead mirror and seeing too much commotion going on at the back of the bus was swift and effective. He'd simply slam on the brakes! And the speed of the bus at the time was of little concern. With high metal seats and no seat belts, he got our attention quickly, and painfully, as we slammed into the seat in front of us. So you can see how I might have some not so fond memories of Mr. Carrico. As far as I know, he never was reprimanded or suffered any consequences from this treatment of his riders, but I know I suffered more than one bump and bruise.

The other memory that stands out for me needs a little background. This was in the early 1960s and the county I lived in was a rural farming community with almost no ethnic diversity. There was, however, a black family living about a mile away, a widower raising 7 children by himself. They were the only black children in the entire school district, but that didn't mean anything to me. The girl that was my age, Faye, was my best friend and we sat together on the school bus every day.

What makes this a remembered event is sad indeed. One afternoon we were on the bus coming home and as we stopped at an intersection not far from Faye's house the bus met my father in his car at the four-way stop. I saw him and waved and made the comment "hey, there's my dad" and Faye leaned forward and waved at him as well. He started to wave back, then got a look of incredulity on his face that I didn't understand, but I was about to find out about.

It was about 5 stops and 20 minutes later that I climbed off the nearly empty bus to find my dad standing in the doorway holding his belt with a well known angry face. My dad was NOT a nice man, to put it mildly. And when he was drinking, which was often, an ugly mean wife-beater was what he was. While Mom almost always born the brunt of his abuse, today I was the target. And why? Because I had sunk so low as to sit on the bus with that (N-word) girl and shame him like that. That was my first introduction to racism and I will never forget it. Even at 9 years old, I knew he was so wrong, about so many things.

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[credit@EdibleCthulhu]