Nostalgic School Bus Memories

Last week, in my blog about field trips https://wp.me/paArEe-1r3 I mused that I could probably write a whole blog about my love for riding the school bus. Challenge accepted. I’ll mention again that I was a walker, so riding the school bus was not a part of my regular routine. I’ve never met a rider that said they loved riding the bus, so I’ll concede the point that familiarity breeds contempt.

Some of my earliest school bus riding memories are rooted in imagination, not reality. In town, we lived kitty-corner from the United Methodist Church and in their side yard, was a big beautiful school bus. To be honest, I’m not sure if it was a retired school bus that the church had procured for transporting folks to church events, or if there was a school bus driver that lived in the vicinity and kept it there. (Yes, that was a thing in my rural community.) But there it was, in view to me from my house, and it called me.

Now, I wasn’t a ring-leader, although I admired and followed kids who were. And when one of the neighborhood kids would say, “Let’s ride the bus!” I was in.

One of older kids – with bus knowledge and more strength than a few of us scrawny kids – would push on the bi-fold door just enough to squeeze through and then pull the door lever, opening the door for the rest of us.  I still remember the joy of running up and down the aisle, bouncing up and down on the green vinyl seats, and, hopefully, getting the chance to play the desired role of bus driver. I loved sitting in the driver seat, small hands holding the massive steering wheel and wielding the power to pull the lever that swung the door open and closed.

Whenever I was lucky enough to ride on a school bus that was actually moving – either riding home with a friend after school or on a school field trip – I would be geeked to be part of the bus kids. I felt a maturity, lining up in the spot where the bus would pull up, jostling down the aisle to claim a ‘good’ seat, and being a part of the after school banter.

I may not have had a lot of bus experience, but on school field trips I knew to look for the seats over the wheel well so we could get a lot of bounce. We also wanted to make sure we got a window that worked with minimal effort. I remember pressing my index fingers, sometimes having to use my knuckles, to push the plastic sliding mechanisms inward to lower the window. Much like the storm windows in the house I grew up in, some of them stuck and would not budge. One side of the window would drop but the other wouldn’t. These windows and seats were to be strictly avoided.

MOH was a bus rider and he doesn’t recall dysfunctional windows. However, he does remember lowering the window only to have the girls in the seat behind him complain about the wind messing up their hair and demanding that he put the window back up. (Hey! It was the 80s.  It was hard to keep that hair sky high, even with a half a can of Aqua-Net.)

Once my classmates and I got to junior high/high school, I enjoyed the independence of riding the spectator bus to “away” football and basketball games. As a member of the band, I rode the bus to festival and solo and ensemble. I have a specific recollection of the percussionists bumping bass drums down the aisle. When I was cheerleader we rode the players bus, which could be a lot of fun when the guys won, and painful and miserable when they lost. Girls had to sit up front when we lost and everybody had to be as stoic as if somebody had died. That was a drag.

For the most part, I think I’m pretty much cured of my love for riding the bus. I’ll do it if we’re traveling – I do enjoy a hop-on hop-off bus tour. MOH and I did a NYC Night Bus Tour that was pretty awesome. But its hard to beat those memories of riding the bus when I was a kid.