It’s the first day back at school for many students. Teachers and their pupils will receive a lot of well-deserved attention today, but let’s consider the school bus drivers, who do a difficult job under stressful conditions and are surely underappreciated.
A driver of the familiar yellow bus has to be calm, alert, focused and sane when there is pandemonium on board and craziness all around. In large cities, rush hour is already toxic. Add 60 immature riders, including some who will cry and throw up, and you have an impossible situation. That’s before we consider any acts of willful misbehavior.
I never committed a climbing-over-the-seats violation and did not engage in screaming, spit wad launching, de-pantsing, tripping or lunch box stealing. Mostly I wanted to look out the window, and I had plenty of time for that once our family moved to Central Illinois and a home nine miles away from the school. Seven of those miles were traveled on a two lane rural highway across unbroken flatness, a treacherous stretch in the icy spring and whenever there was a wind, which was all the time. The bus stop was also exposed to that wind, which brings to mind some brutal winter mornings. A driver doesn’t have to do much to be a welcome sight under those conditions. Discipline problems went down in January.
For many of my middle and high school years, the bus driver was also the biology teacher. He was a good man and an excellent teacher who did the bus job for extra money. Because he spent the whole day, every day trying to get us to memorize the Parts of a Cell, he wasn’t exactly hungry for more student contact. His silences were deep and his stare was a physical force that could bounce off the overhead mirror and press a wayward child into the very back seat. That’s a useful power.
Some drivers are happy-go-lucky friendly types who try their best to make the trip non-traumatic and even empowering. My driver took it in the opposite direction. The threat of trauma was his strategic ally, and he wanted to leave a bit of doubt in our minds about what he might possibly do next. A well-placed glare and a low growl would do wonders to spark our imaginations and he knew we would picture acts of cruelty much worse than anything he could actually perform, even in those days before the introduction of cameras on board. Remember, we were driving over country roads. A body left in a ditch by a cornfield might go undiscovered for weeks, especially in Winter.
In spite of the fear, or maybe because of it, he got all of us there and back for many years with nary a problem. That’s quite an accomplishment!
School bus memories, anyone?
Trail Baboon 
Greetings! We also lived several miles from the school, so the bus was crowded. Tried to sit next to my friend, but that didn’t always work. You’d get on the bus, survey the empty seats and try to determine who would be harmless to sit next to that wouldn’t make fun of me, or engage in some inane conversation or just disrupt my need for calm and serenity. I avoided the back of the bus because that’s where rowdy boys sat who were sure to play head games or just generally be bad news. The buses were cold in winter and ripe with teenage sweat in spring.
Luckily, I didn’t ride the bus in high school. At the boarding school, I just walked from the dorm to the cafeteria in the morning. Although I do remember the fun bus rides to and from volleyball games or track meets. There weren’t annoying boys (only coach), so us girls could get silly and have fun. Of course, now I welcome the company of men, but as a terribly shy girl it was usually just too stressful.
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i went to grade school at the catholic school 20 miles and an hours worth of pick ups and drop offs away. the bus rides were to be done in silence. no horseplay was tolerated. we were told that was for th public school kids and we would have none of that here. the bus drivers were all custodial disiplinarians who used thier mirrors as weapon and their note pads as ticket issuances. i can remember getting inbig trouble for flipping a friend the bird out of the bus window as we approached the playground before school. the bus driver was appalled at such behavior. give me a break. the holier than thou attitude was the cathlic school experience in a nutshell. the bus driversm the nuns, the lay folk who hired on. not much room for life there just herding cattle and using prods as the tool of choice. i got to public school in 7th grade and we walked except in winter but on those winter busrides i could not believe the unruly glory of the celebration of life as the buds all froliced and rejoiced in loud and unabashed bliss daily for the 20 minutes it took to get to the school. a difference of night and day. in public school you had to start a fire in the back of the bus to get into trouble. in catholic school you were in trouble for being there and had better not push it or you would discover the rath of god before the sun came up.
thanks for the memories dale. i am putting the 11 year old on the bus at 7 and the 9 year old on at 9. life is good and the bus drivers are familiar. silent type for the 9 year old and forest gump type for the 11 year old. they grow uop fast. and i was that age about three weeks ago myself.
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Good Morning to All:
I did ride a school bus, but I was in high school and sat with the other high school kids who behaved fairly well. There was a little teasing and that was about it.
I do know about problems with getting school kids to behave because I was a sub teacher. I’m afraid I never mastered the skills your bus driver had for keeping order.
I could, some times, head off a bad situation by sending a student who just would not behave to the office. I have seen teachers act as though they were extremely mad in order to gain control.
I probably should have been a little more heavy handed, but many times I could do okay by just telling them what I expected. Other times I had to put up with a fairly large amount of bad behavior. Generally I was liked by the students because I wasn’t heavy handed.
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sounds like you were the ideal sub jim. a nice guy who tried to be reasonable and who resort to the principles office rather than turning into a jerk. no wonder you were liked. i’ll bet you still are.
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Maintaining order in public school class rooms is a tricky business. You really shouldn’t let the class room get too loud like I did at times. However, I know many kids or very bored by thier classes, as I was, and some just don’t want to be there and this can lead some immature behavior. We are long over due for a more student centered approach to education in our schools.
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amen, my elementary schoolers are in classes with 31 students. i jsut saw a 60 minutes show where the kids are selelcted by lottery to go to school in a cloister. no tv no video games 10 – 12 students in a class 2 periods of english 2 periods of math 2-4 hours of homework to reach a level of success that will insure college bound youth and i have a school that says no home work as the solution to the differiention between groups. if you dumb down people who could go forward if challanged, then the leave no child behind program looks better. the kids know they are slip sliding through school and they won’t learn until much later that the opportunity for a good education has been withheld form them to make the politicians look good. shame shame
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Rise and Blow Away this morning!
I was a “town kid” so I walked to school. It was a bit over a mile to the Junior High and High School. In Junior High the dad of a friend was a teacher at that crumbling building, so we had a ride to school with him if we were at the corner on time, BUT I WON’T WAIT FOR YOU IF YOU ARE LATE!! Elementary School, Good Old Franklin School, was only three blocks away. I think walking to school like this needs to be resurrected. One’s concentration is very good after walking a mile in below freezing temperatures!
My only bus memories are from Band Trips to regional contests or All State Competitions and those were a lot of fun. In particular, Dave Bogenrief (trumpet) did a really funny chicken imitation that kept us entertained, along with “99 Bottles of Beer, vocalizing our instrumental pieces, and repeating local gossip.
On another note, a dear friend of our family is grateful to have just obtained a bus driver job in our district after running his own business for over 30 years. The business was taken from him in a hostile takeover last year and he has been jobless since. He will be a sophisticated and capable bus driver, but what a waste of business talent and knowledge, given up to the recession!
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My son rode the accessible bus for 13 years and then I had a job where I helped parents with kids in special ed. Boy do I have bus stories…..I think little busses with vulnerable riders can encourage tyranny by those who drive without appropriate guidance and support.
Child thrown off bus for not listening to driver-he was deaf.
My son brought a bible on the bus, not as an act of faith but because of the maps of ancient cities. The aide said that godless people had made a rule that he couldn’t read the bible on the bus.
The driver and aide dropped my son off at the farm and returned in their cars after their last run. They proceeded to pick apples without permission. The next day they complained to my son that there were worms in the apples!
Wishing you all smoother rides on the trail!
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sounds like the same bus drivers we had
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Yikes! That’s sad. My 13-yr old son is in Special Ed so he was always picked up in the van and they always had wonderful drivers for him. Since 6th grade, he’s been on the big bus, so I don’t know how that is, but he hasn’t reported any problems. We’re within the 2-mile limit where he should walk, but because he has difficulty with problem-solving and is vulnerable, Sherburne County backed me up to say he should be bussed without charge, thankfully.
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good for sherburne county.
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Here is a story from sub teaching that, I think, fits with the bus riding stories. I was teaching at the middle school when they did a practice lock down drill. The very heavy handed principle was checking the doors of class rooms to be sure the teachers had locked the doors. My door was locked, but the principle could hear some talking in my class room. She opened the door and told us we could have all been killed in a real lock down because we were not being quiet. When she left the students were quiet and I told them probably not all of them would have been killed. A student added that probably only the ones near the door would have been killed.
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Small minds…..
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My most recent bus memory is is fraught with anxiety. In February, my inattentive son was driving for his work in Moorhead, MN. (He is a job coach for developmentally disabled individuals and was driving the company van after dropping his workers at their homes) when he failed to observe a school bus that had its arm out. Well, he drove right past it. No one was crossing the street nor were there any children present, but the bus driver quite rightly reported him, and he was charged with a gross misdemeanor for the incident. He was finger printed and had a mugshot and he was truly sorry and pled guilty. Well, since this crime is considered by Minnesota to be in the same league as DUI, we were very concerned it would prevent him from entering Canada, since having a DUI will do that. He and his wife joined us in Montreal for our recent vacation, and the night they arrived I didn’t know if we would get a call from the hotel or from some detention center as he awaited deportation. Prior to leaving for Canada, he researched Canadian government websites as to what to do if you want to enter Canada in his circumstances, and he wrote a required essay as to why he thought he was rehabilitated and had extra money to pay as they can charge you for entering the country. He also had his Canadian birth certificate. There was no problem at the border, I am happy to report. He has certainly learned his lesson and is much more attentive when he drives. I am thankful the charge was reduced to a simple misdemeanor and he didn’t get jail time or lose his license for 3 months.
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Morning all–
Ah yes, the school bus… I’m the youngest of five and the only one in my family that attended public schools through out. My siblings all did the one room school through 6th grade and then high school in town. And I think only my brother and I ever road the bus…
In elementary school, the driver was Ed; green uniform style pants and shirt. Quiet old guy; never got too excited but I don’t recall a reason he had to be… bus ride was maybe half hour? I recall having cousins on the bus. Middle school the driver was a younger, hippy type kid; my neighbor and I were the last two off the bus and we’d sit at the end of the driveway and talk about music with the driver. Wish I could remember his name…
First couple years of High School, before I started driving myself, the driver was a neighbor lady named Pam. My best friend and I caused trouble by getting off at each others house without the proper permission slip. And once or twice we’d open the ’emergency’ door and go out that way…
I still see Pam so if I hadn’t behaved she’d still have that over me…
Now we live too close to school so my kids aren’t eligible for busing. Yes, we’re out in the country, but the HS is just up the road… so before my son drove, (he’s a senior this year– best time of his life, eh?) my wife would drop him off on her way to work. And I would drop off our daughter on my way in…
She does get a bus ride to various afterschool activities. She also has special needs and the drivers have always been great. One guy in particular, ‘Mr. Bob’ started as a para back in elementary school and now is an aide on the bus; ‘high fives’ all the kids; gives them all nick names…. a great person to have on your side when life is against you…
Lovely wife is with beautiful daughter today since it’s her first day in HS and we’re still sorting out some things… son is on his own. He wasn’t very excited to find out their lockers were adjacent, but we think daughters’ will move and Boy! those combination lockers are difficult these day! Did you know there’s no ‘latch’ anymore? The dial is the latch…
I’m yammering…. sorry.
Later!
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Ben-If the lock is too daunting for your daughter the OT’s have access to alternate and easier locks.
Good luck!
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Yes, they are supposed to be getting her a ‘keyed’ locker… she had magnetic ones through middle school… Thanks Beth-Ann!
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Wow, it is clear to me that I missed an entire world of experiences by not riding the school bus! I attended Catholic school too, but in my era, (the saddle shoes and white knee-highs era. Anyone remember saddle shoes?)Catholic schools were partly defined by their lack of bus transportation for students. Most of the student body walked to school from 1st through 12th grade unless a family had the luxury of an available vehicle. Most families were one car families, and many families had only one licensed driver in the household. In our house Dad took the bus to work, and Mom didn’t drive – not that it mattered much because my folks didn’t own a car. Not having the expense of a car was one of the cost saving practices used so that my parents could afford to send us to private school.
Lucky for us, Seattle is an easy city to walk in year ’round due to the temperate climate and the beauty of the flora strewn cityscape – but man, those long walks could be killers when you were carrying lots of books! Backpacks were not yet a part of the school scene, so one got pretty adept at lugging books around.
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Of course we remember saddle shoes – mine were the modified “bop” saddles.
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My most memorable bus rides were the summer I took an art class across town in 4th grade. I walked to grade school, I was only half a block from school, so a long bus ride was novel. The summer school bus driver liked to play music while he drove (and sometimes sing along, as I recall). The popular song that summer was “Afternoon Delight” – a favorite of our driver – hearing it now makes me think of being on a hot bus on my way to art class with a bus driver who may (or may not) have been completely sober. Also, I think I was in college before I really listened to the lyrics and understood what that song was about…at the tender age of 10 or so, I thought it really *was* about fireworks. Oh my.
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You mean it’s not…?
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“Afternoon delight” is a pbj sandwich with a Hostess Cupcake alongside. Or that’s what I was told!
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I thought that was, “Sugar, Sugar.”
Geez, I really gotta pay more attention…
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Hated the bus rides to and from school, which I have explained on here before.
Bus rides to play sports in the north can be tedious, to Grand Marais, to
Ely, to I. Falls, etc.
Vignette of a day: mailman Bryan pulled up outside my big windows, opened the back door of his mail car, and a bunch of mail blew out. He had to chase it down in the middle of a busy intersection, chasing after several pieces in several directions. (My daughter called just before that to talk about her youngest going off to K for the first day and then asking for advice, a conversation I was not going to interupt or I would have helped.) Then as he was sorting mail in the lobby outside my office and we were talking, a man stepped out of the elevator. Bryan and he looked at each other and had a very forced casual conversation (“Well. ah. ah, hgow are you . . .”). After the man left the building, Bryan explained that the man was his first wife’s divorce lawyer.
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Vignette of a really really bad day: about 6 weeks ago I alluded to a health-care worker my daughter knows who who was attacked by one of his patients. The pateint walked into his office and shot him, luckily through the fleshy part of his left arm when aiming at the heart. This weekend he stopped to help some motorists in trouble. They stabbed him six times and gave him a concussion.
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Vignette of another bad day: went over to the PO to get the mail. As I came out, a man was making a u-turn in a big Ram pick-up around a center island. I heard five popping sounds from his pick-up. He parked and we went out in the street, where we found five of the six studs from his right front tire. When I left, he was trying to decide of he dared to drive it. Not a man, I do not think ,who was up to paying the cost.
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Yikes! Mankato is apparently a lot more …um… ‘exciting’ than when I used to get down there often in the mid-90’s. Always enjoyed ‘Kato and the people that were my customers. …something in the water?…
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clyde, its nice to have my bad days put in perspective. shot and stabbed tops my worst day period.
i had a situation at the state fair where a woman came up to my kids and was soooooo happy to see them, i couldn’s place her but asked the kids who she was after she left and found out she was the hairdresser who came to court to proclaim me a maniac as a character assisin in my divorce trial for my getting upset in her salon when my ex wife scheduled a haircut for my time that conflicted with tickets to a play i had scheduled.
people are incredible. i have no time for polite interaction for people who have stuck it to me. i have explained to my kids they are supposed to love their mother i am not any more. they get it.
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Thanks for the great bus stories, Baboons. I won’t add to them. I’ve never seen the inside of a school bus. As I posted not long ago, we walked seven blocks to school, coming home at noon to eat with my family, then going back.
I’ve just come back from Lake Superior. Last night two thunderstorms swept over the cabin. What a lovely thing to see and hear! My queer flat-topped cabin gets noisy in a heavy rain, and I’d forgotten how loud and exciting the winds are when they usher in a storm. I was thrilled to see sandhill cranes near my cabin. Surprised to see two separate flocks of wild turkeys. Turkeys never flourished that far north before, I’m sure.
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happy day. i love thunderstorms too
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It is fun to watch the storms come at you across the lake, as I once did, as well as watch them scurry away from you, as I often did. I have, steve, some pix of amazing clouds over L. Superior.
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I love watching storms too. My grandparents had a tin roof on their farm house -always fun to listen to. Now I’m married to a guy who closes all the windows if there’s a chance of rain.
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In high school I didn’t ride the bus often. I had the use of my dad’s car since my after school job was at the same place where he was the cost accountant. (I was a janitor and sometimes got to do assembly work in the factory. No better way to learn the benefits of a college education.) anyway one day I had to ride the bus home. The driver didn’t recognize me and didn’t want to let me on. I remember standing there reciting my address and finishing with, “and my sister is on this bus.”
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funny laura, did your sister have the brains to deny knowing you. that would have been funny. make you squirm a little.
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Luckily that didn’t happen. She was already on the bus (picked up at the middle school) and was far enough back I think she was oblivious to the whole exchange.
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One of those silly things make necessary by all the childhood custody and predatory issues. Schools go to some lengths on these issues because they know of schools who have lost law suits for turning over students to the wrong people and dropping them off a the wrong houses. My son-in-law just went back to bus driving today, which he used to do in Renee’s country. Bus drivers are not paid well and carry a lot of responsibilities for the safety of the kids in their driving and how they deliver kids and to whom. Meanwhile they have to keep the kids in control and manage bullying while they watch the road. I am always amazed there are not more, indeed many, accidents and other problems arsing. We once had a bus driver race an iron ore train to a crossing 40 miles up in the Superior forest, and lose. The driver who did this passed all the tests and checks but you knew he questionable as driver, but he hwas inf ac the only applicant for that job.
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Emmer would naturally tell us they are overpaid.
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I hope there were no kids on the bus! It is scary some of the standard questions that get asked on school paperwork these days. We live closer to an elementary school now than where I grew up and walked / biked alone. No one thought much of it. Now you have to sign special forms if you want to allow your child to do the same instead of taking the bus.
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Laura–there were about 20 kids on the bus, which was t-boned by the train (110 gondolas full of taconite are hard to stop). Three had significant but not life-threatening injuries, one has permanent arm disability.
And see my explanation below re the forms and why all this silliness is necessary.
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I lived in the country, miles from my school — our bus driver, Carl, was a next door neighbor. I was able to see across the fields to his driveway, about a mile and half away, so I was able to tell exactly when to walk out to the bus stop. For most of middle and high school, I was the first kid on the bus.
So my bus ride was an hour each way, every day. For a farm kid, with chores to do morning and night, this was an astonishing boon: it meant I had two hours of reading time every day. So I brought paperbacks with me, and plowed my way through Tolkien, Asimov, Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Carl Sagan, and so many others. It was amazing time, filled with worlds far from my own mundane one. Sure, I’d look out the window, I’d talk to other kids a little, but mostly I’d just read. Alone. Every day.
And now when I get back to re-read any of these books, I recall them with a strange mixture of diesel exhaust and classic 70s rock-and-roll from WDGY, made tinny and distorted by the speakers wired around that holy green and beige tin can.
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Nice description. There are kids in NE MN who ride far more than an hour each way each day.
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Some days my grandkids will walk out to the bus parked in their front yard and get in with their father, whi will drive the route to school.
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Hi BC… love the story! Welcome and thanks!
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Great story, BC. Boy, isn’t it great that you didn’t get carsick reading like that?
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Great story bc. You hear from time to time about kids who were bedridden or homebound for one reason or another, and the isolation led them to reading, or guitar playing or painting, and that made all the difference.
Your path sounds easier! Thanks for writing it down for us.
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where was the farm that wdgy was within range? remember jim dandy and white sox?
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A sexist comment from a parent and educator: When schools in the 70’s started hiring women to drive it was wonderful. It opened up the pool to many more appplicants so schools could weed out the grumpy old bastards, like drove my bus. And, this is the sexist part, the women drivers were much more likely to deal witht kids better.
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Great stories everyone… Clyde, you and the “…grumpy old bastards…” Yep; I was fortunate not to get the guy named ‘Herman’ that everyone was scared of.
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Just to show what child custody issues and how they relate to schools, a common type of story: parents will have a bitter custody fight, and then one parent is awarded custody. That parent will inform the school that the child is never to be allowed to be picked up by the other parent (bet you did not even know that schools are a part of this, but they often are). So now the schools have to track this. During school is easy, but when kids are going home it gets tough. I cannot imagine how this is managed in larger schools where educators don’t know the parents as they do in small towns. But then the custody parent will have a problem and ask the other parent to come pick up the child after school. Seems simple to them, but the school has been told this cannot happen. So now the parents are upset, and the school is left to deal with this upset child after school. Or on buses, they will call the student by cell phone (it does not matter how old the child is, the issues still apply) and tell them to ride a different bus and get off at the other parents house, which the school is forbidden to allow.
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As long as I have nothing to do and am on the topic of legal tangles in school:
students at the age of 18 are by law adult. They can file for adult status in school, which means that they have full rights to confidentiality. The parents cannot now be told anything about that student, or even that she/he has filed for this status. So a parent calls up and asks for information on the child’s progress–and this is naturally always with a student who is not making progess. So you cannot answer.
My next door neighbor had a son who filed for adult status and then as a senior did not do any of the work in my class (and I always identifed at the beginning of every class what were the mimumun requirements to pass all of my classes). So he did not graduate, which she found out on graduation night. He tells her how it is all my fault. She attacks me and I cannot say a word in my defense.
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Once, on a college band trip, the first chair clarinet player fell asleep on the bus while we were traveling. I managed to get a hold of a needle and thread and I sewed him to the seat while he slept. It was kind of tricky stiching his clothes to the seat cover. He was laying down, curled up on his left side, and I got his entire right side from shoulder to pants cuff pretty securely stitched to the back of the seat. He was sort of grumpy about it when he woke up and needed to get off the bus.
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Having been on so many band buses That…..Is…..Funny! What a trick.
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that is the best bus story ever renee. well done
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Did anybody read today’s (Tuesday’s) Cul de sac comic in the Star Tribune? You should.
http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac/
PS I had a great first day of school.
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Perfect! Thanks for sending that on.
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Cool website Holly. Another Mary Traverse I see.
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Provoked On The Bus
Jerry Wilson teased me every day until the day I had my fill and grabbed his cap and tossed it like a Frisbee and watched in horror as it glided across the aisle and straight out the window and his mom called my mom and he was in trouble and I was in trouble and she hauled me outside and forced me to ride shotgun and give directions in the very red Pontiac where we traveled the gravel to the spot where the coincidentally very red cap landed and then to the house of my tormentor where I returned it with apologies but I knew that he knew that it was insincerely vocalized and I wanted him institutionalized because the twerp he had it coming!
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you didn’t blow your nose in the hat first?
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funny
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I always get confused about being bused and being bussed.
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also funny
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One means being transported in a noisy old unreliable vehicle with bad shocks. The other is when you’re removed from the table in restaurants.
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