We’re a society that loves change. Very few things totally satisfy us, so we’re always looking to take what we have and update it, modernize it, change it, improve it and generally make it, well, crappier.But I think I’ve found the one thing we can’t say that about. The one thing that has seen little if any changes over the years. I spotted it while out running the other day and stared in bemusement as it rolled by: a school bus.
Yes, a big, yellow diesel-belching school bus, filled with screaming kids that looked like an insane asylum on wheels.
It could have been a brand new bus for all I knew, but the world would never know. Modern advancements, or at least modern design, have long passed over the venerable school bus. It’s the instrument of transportation that time forgot — a throwback to yesteryear that is the only constant from one generation to the next. And I, for one, am glad.
It brings back memories. There was nothing better as a kid than a school field trip or an away soccer match in a beaten-up bus. Any time you piled in, with all its funny smells and vinyl seats marred by unexplainable stains, it was a good day.
I remember in high school on a soccer trip, our coach appeared to be having trouble with the brakes. I say “appeared to be” because while he wouldn’t admit it, the dead giveaway was we weren’t stopping ever for anything including red lights. He was using the emergency brake, and pumping hard on the pedal to build up pressure in the line. The brakes gave out loud gasps as they slowly woke up, always too late, and I sat there picturing flames shooting from the wheel wells.
We hooted and hollered on the wild ride, and I think the coach quit shortly after.
When a school buys a bus, it basically does so knowing it will use it for the next 2,200 years. You have to get your money’s worth, and because it is in service that long, all manner of wonderful things collect in there over the years. Rips in the seats become treasure troves of ancient history to dig through. “Look, a 30-year-old soda can with something still in it.”
This of course leads to: “I bet you can’t drink it.”
Now, every bus ever sold also came with one boy who was willing to eat anything on request. Want to dare him to eat the gum pressed under the seats? Done! Dare him to a finish a Twinkie stuffed in the seat decades ago? You betcha’. Anything you point to, he would chow down on, and the bonus was you then got a field trip to the hospital.
Buses needed hall monitors. The driver or coach had a big rear view mirror to keep an eye on things, but with 30-plus kids and smoking brakes, how much could they really observe? And what kid worth his weight in salt is going to fall for, “Johnson, sit down or I’m coming back there!” when you’re racing down the interstate at 70 m.p.h.?
So all manner of mayhem would take place: Gambling (you could practically run a casino), funny signs hung out the windows (“Stay back! Bus known to catch fire!”), or general pranks.
A favorite was getting truckers to blare their horns. This was a huge hit, and if you could do it, a sign that you would go far in life. This was always draining on a poor teacher’s nerves, already frayed by the thought of driving juvenile delinquents in a brake-free vehicle. Then, all of a sudden, the road was filled with marauding truckers honking erratically.
It explains why so many would take evasive action, swerving wildly and exiting quite suddenly. With the bus pulled over, they would yell, “Sit down while I take my meds.”
Not long after, that teacher would quit.
What wonderful memories. Which is why my hope for future generations is the venerable school bus never changes. (As long as I never need to drive one.)