For most of my thirteen years in grade, middle, and high school, I was able to either walk to school with my sibs, or we hitched a ride with our dad, who opened the drugstore at eight a.m. but got in early to bring in, sort, and stack newspapers, getting a jump on what was, for him, a long day. That meant we were early, too, getting to school, but that was okay because early kids could hang out in the cafeteria or gym until the first bell rang.
There was also a brief, wonderful, handful of years during which my dad got some relief in the form of a partner in his business, which was open seven days a week; during those fleeting few years, we took the bus whenever he wasn’t working mornings, alternate weeks or days depending on his partner’s needs and his own.
I loved taking the bus; the steaming, colorful chaos of that space entranced me; finding a seat was running the gauntlet of legs, feet, noise, and emotion (who is my friend, who is not, who among these kids do I even know?!), my brown paper book bag clutched to my chest. This was also in the days before pants were okay to be worn by girls; that made it even more fun. Not.
The gauntlet and my lack of close friends or classmates who were also neighbors in our less-populated neck of the woods meant I ended up sitting in the way back – the last row of seats – with Junior Elliott and Charlie Gray, who were in my older sister’s class. It felt like I had moved up in the world, which I don’t think I had but still, look at meeeee! But more than that, I felt like they both liked me, which they might’ve done. We were all children, and the way back had the biggest bounce when going over bumps in the rural road.
As I recall, I led most of our conversations; conversations that were challenging to have given the level of noise inside that tin can. But mostly, Junie and Charlie teased and tortured me, grabbing my bag or individual books which they threatened to toss out the window, or passed forward in the bus. I never felt truly threatened or frightened by them; they were farm boys, roughhousing buffoons, elbow jostling, harmless gentlemen of a sort, and to their core. And even if I didn’t know it, though I suspect they did, my family – business owners in the village – were considered a different, higher class than theirs; they would never cross that invisible, potent line into actual harm.
Funny but their dads also had jobs that were seven days a week, nights, too, like mine; my dad was often and often called out to fill a prescription on Sunday night, or Tuesday, even if he’d closed up only an hour before. He volunteered at the local rural hospital, too, getting home many nights after seven or eight p.m.
More than once, in the snow, the bus was late picking us up, and we stood freezing at the side of the road. During one snow storm the bus picked us up as it went up the valley, not back down toward town. This felt like an adventure, and was one, because when we went up Bovina Mountain for the last stop, while turning around the rear end of the bus slid on ice and snow over and off the road; saplings nudged the window by my face, the usual chaos of the kids silenced for once.
Everyone knew we were in trouble, the slope was very steep along that road; we knew too that we had to focus on our bus driver, Mr. Lawrence, getting us out of this mess, this spot we were, collectively, in. He did it, rocking the bus back and forth until we had traction, and I remember wanting to whoop with relief and joy, but we all stayed quiet until we got on the main, safer road. Harvey was his given name, he was a customer of my father’s, and I thought he was terribly handsome
The bus was better than the ride in my dad’s car because that meant three of us stuffed in the back, my older sister having claimed the front seat in her special way, imperious and chilling. It simply wasn’t’ worth the fight. And, once on the road, total silence. My brother, who had braces for what I swear was a decade, hardly ever said a thing during those years. My dad and my younger sister were not morning people, and were consistently grouchy AF, and I – who loved school and could not wait to get there – was (annoyingly) cheerful, full of morning pep and sunshine because yes, I was a morning person. Still am, although I don’t want to talk to anyone – particularly strangers – until after eleven a.m., if then.
I loved taking the bus, although I didn’t love walking up the hill, many days, back to the house. Some of that, of course, was the weather but less often the rain or snow kind, rather not knowing what would be waiting for me at the end, as in what kind of mood would mother be in, and which mother – nice or not so nice – would greet me. Charlie and Junior, they were much more reliable, even if they did frustrate the heck out of me at times, passing my graded papers around. Their silliness, and their basic decency, was guaranteed.