School Bus Misadventures

Back in the 1970s, when I was in my twenties and still a couple of bubbles shy of plumb, I decided I could manage the dual role of a schoolteacher and a school bus driver.

“What could go wrong?” I asked myself.

You see, in your twenties it’s easy to do bold and stupid things because you can’t imagine all the things that could go wrong. For us guys our twenties are merely an extension of our teenage years. Jump off a roof onto a trampoline that will catapult you over three cars and eventually land you on the seat of a running motorcycle which you will drive across a frozen pond, all while blindfolded? Sure! Absolutely!

When I took the job as a bus driver, I never thought about asking about the route I was assigned. Why would it matter? A bus route is a bus route, right? (Oh, you foolish, foolish boy.)

At the first in-service meeting for bus drivers, I met all the other drivers. It was a seasoned bunch of men, which is a nice way to describe the grizzled-looking men each with a nervous twitch either in one eye, or shoulder, or leg. It made me wonder if they were combat veterans from World War Two or Korea. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the case.

“We’re veteran bus drivers,” they told me.

Now, see? That right there, that was my warning, a warning that flew right over my head.

A few of them asked me what route I was running. When I told them, some turned pale, genuflected, and muttered something, while others flinched and whispered, “High Pockets.” One snaggle-tooth driver put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Been nice knowin’ ya.”

They all moved slowly away as if I was a leper.

I laughed nervously, hoping they would also laugh and say, “We’re just kidding with you.”

All they did was look at me like they were viewing a body at a funeral home.

When I took the job, I envisioned a gleaming yellow bus with shiny wheels and tires. What I didn’t know was the newest driver gets the oldest bus. The bus I drove me think of a swayback horse that hadn’t been curried or brushed in years. Some of the windows had cracks in them, and there were holes in the upholstery. The windshield wiper on my side worked fine. However, the other one acted like it took all the energy it could muster just to swipe across the window every minute or so.

Once I started picking up students on my route, I quickly learned what “High Pockets” meant. It was the nickname for hard-looking grandmother whose grandchildren lived with her.

It would be hyperbole to describe what they lived in as a house. It was more of a shack than a house. The yard wasn’t a yard, because there was no grass growing except around the edges of the three bald tires piled on top of each other, the two rusted-out cars, a couple of concrete blocks, and two ladderback chairs that the cane bottoms had rotted out of.

Her grandchildren were the first kids to be picked up on my route. On the first day, she marched them out to the bus and gave me a look that said, “Don’t mess with me!”

All she said to the kids was, “Y’all mind yourselves.”

The best way I can describe the kids is to use the word hellions.

“Hellion: a disorderly, troublesome, rowdy, or mischievous person”

Yep, that’s what they were.

I learned that being a bus driver required you to have the vision of a chameleon, one eye on the road and one eye on the mirror that showed the bus’s interior. Why not a camera to monitor behavior? Ha! Please, if you ask that question, you’re too young to fully appreciate this story.

One day, as I was dropping kids off at their homes, I noticed several of them had a red whelp or two on their cheek or neck. Some had tears in their eyes as they rubbed the whelps, while others looked as angry as the whelps themselves. I asked an older boy about it, and he told me one of High Pockets’ kids had some hot peppers out of their garden and was swiping them across people’s faces.

Hellions.

When I stopped to let High Pockets kids off, I told them I was taking them to the principal’s office the next morning.

At home that night, while sitting in our living room that had green and white shag carpet tall enough to lose a young child in, my wife and I were watching one of the three channels our antennae could pick up the signal of, our wall phone with the thirty-foot cord rang. I lifted the receiver off the hook and before I could even say “Hello,” someone on the other end screamed a stream of cuss words that included some rather unkind remarks about me and whoever had given birth to me. There were also some threats thrown in about what was going to be done to me if I took their kids to the principal’s office.

Yes, it was High Pockets.

When she finally took a breath, I told her I wasn’t going to listen to talk like that, and I hung up the phone.

Before I had taken two steps toward the living room, the phone rang again. When I answered it, I was informed by High Pockets that hanging up was the wrong thing to do, at least that’s what I could glean from the curse-filled words she was slinging at me.

I hung up again.

That night, I slept the sleep of youth, unclouded by “what might happen.”

Pulling to a stop in front of where High Pockets lived, I opened the door of the bus and waited.

A few seconds later, her three grandkids burst out the front door whooping and hollering and carrying rifles and shotguns in each hand. It was Lord of the Flies in living color.

Even though I’m not Catholic, I thought about genuflecting—just in case.

A wiser man would have slammed shut the bus door and raced off. But, I’ve already established I was anything but wise back then.

I sat there, transfixed by the untimely ending of my life.

When the kids reached the door, they yelled excitedly, “The house is on fire! The house is on fire! Ma says get the guns out first!”

Blinking my eyes and shaking my head, I said, “Huh?”

They repeated their apocalyptic message.

Reaching for the key, I shut off the bus and told them, “Show me.”

Inside the house, I first saw that the walls were covered in cardboard, the only insulation they could afford.

Next, the voices of High Pockets and a younger woman, who I learned was the mother of the kids, were yelling at each other while pointing at the point where the stovepipe from their woodburning stove went through a wall. The pipe had gotten so hot the cardboard was on fire.

They weren’t arguing about what to do about the fire; they were arguing over whose fault it was.

Rome was burning while Nero played his violin.

I turned to the kids and yelled, “Get me a bucket of water.”

A few moments later they returned from outside where the well was, carrying buckets of water.

One at a time I slung them against the wall, splashing the women in the process, which, apparently, they hardly noticed because they never missed a beat in the argument that had evolved into hair pulling and kicking.

Convinced the fire was out, I told the kids to get on the bus.

Once we were all seated, I checked to be certain they hadn’t snuck a gun on the bus, then said a silent prayer of thanks for delivery from the fiery furnace, cranked the bus and went on my way — a little older, a little wiser.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume 1: I Didn’t Know Donkeys Could Laugh.