Good ol’ school bus days

Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2024 4:41 pm

By Jim Hamilton

School is underway again throughout the Ozarks. Just as when I was a boy, hundreds of kids climb on yellow school buses every morning at country crossroads or the ends of their driveways and lanes.

As kids we alternately loved and hated that yellow bus — hated it when we didn’t want to go to school, loved it when we didn’t want to stay home for another day’s chores.

I rode a school bus from my first day of school at Kickapoo Elementary (now Springfield’s Walt Disney) in the fall of 1953, and it was not a good experience. Getting to school was simple. Getting home was more complicated. The bus made two trips after school, and I was supposed to take the second one, but no one told me.

I boarded too early, and after all the stops, I was the last kid on the bus, nowhere near home. The driver ultimately took me home, but was neither kind nor understanding of the complexities of bus scheduling for a 5-year-old.

I never made the same mistake again, but I never liked my bus driver, either. First grade was not a good year for me.

We moved several times before I hit fifth grade. I walked to school at Nixa, Springfield and Republic, but before we moved inside town I rode a Republic bus. I don’t remember much about it, except for an older boy always got on right after me and wore a belt with a big, shiny Western buckle.

My walking ended in the fall of 1957 when I started at Fair Grove.

From then on every school day started at 8 a.m. at the end of our driveway and ended at 4:15 p.m. when Jim Roberts brought Fair Grove bus No. 9 to a rumbling stop near the end our drive. I rode that bus almost every day through my senior year.

Most days the rides were uneventful. I just stared out a window at the passing landscape of fence posts, trees and cattle.

However, as a new kid in 1957, I had to contend with a bit of teasing at the hands of a couple of wise guys. One upperclassman liked to sit behind me and flip my ears, until I tired of his fun, turned and punched him in the face. He retaliated with a slap that knocked me across the seat.

We exchanged a few choice words, then sat quietly for the rest of the ride. He never touched me again.

The bus driver saw it all, but nobody was kicked off the bus or sent to the office, and at the end of the day we were all friends — friends with a bit more respect for one another.

If you never had the privilege of riding one of the yellow land yachts back and forth from school, you missed something priceless. The window of school bus offers a view of the world wholly unlike that from behind the steering wheel of a car.

In my mind, I can still picture the passing vistas, friends at the ends of driveways and mothers waving from the porch.

I may remember nothing of a particular day at school, but I yet recall every stop and mile on my daily journeys, soaking up the rural Ozarks of my youth through my window on the bus.