School Bus
My wife, Gena, and I had lunch a couple of days ago with our friends, Dick and Mo. When we get together, our lunch conversations always cover a wide range of topics, and this day was no different. I’m not sure now how it came up, but someone mentioned an incident in the news involving a school bus. Mo commented that it must be awfully hard for school districts these days to get competent drivers. She said that she couldn’t imagine who would want to take on such a responsibility. At which I responded, “Well, back when I was in school, we had high school boys driving our buses." Mo was aghast at the thought and had never heard of such. However, she had grown up in town—over in Dothan, Alabama—and had never had the privilege of riding a rural school bus. After I recounted a few of the memories I had of riding the bus to Home School in Big Level back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, she said that this would be a great topic for My Back Pages and that I should write about it. Well, thank you, Mo; indeed, I should.
One of my earliest memories is that of standing in the living room at the front window of our old farmhouse, waiting and watching for the school bus to come barreling up our sandy gravel lane bringing my older siblings, Judy and Keith, back home from a day at school. I was 3 years old and, because of my October birthday, I was two years away from starting the first grade and becoming a “big kid” myself. Thinking back now, more than actually going to school, I simply wanted to ride that big yellow bus. I got that opportunity when I started at Home Vocational School in September of 1958.
Back in those days, the venerable old school in the heart of Big Level, just below White’s Crossing, had 150-160 students in 12 grades coming from all over the northeastern quadrant of Stone County. From Red Creek and above to the Perry County line and including the communities of Big Level, Deep Creek, New Zion, and the northern portion of Ramsey Springs. It was one of the largest schools in the county and had 5 or 6 buses serving its student population.
My family lived on a 40 acre farm in upper Big Level, a half mile off of Big Four Road and along the head of Kirby Creek. Even though we were only 3 miles north of the school, the bus we rode took 35-45 minutes to get us there, sometimes longer. The bus started its morning route on Big Four almost to Wiggins, just a mile or so from the Hal Folkes’ place, the old Big Four Farm. One or two Brelands were picked up at that first stop, both teenagers. I’ve forgotten their first names—a boy and a girl, I think. They were several grades above me and I just don’t recall them clearly. Sadly, I’ve let the names of many of the older kids on the bus route slip through my memory these past 60+ years. From there, the bus traversed eastward along Big Four, making detours on Marshall Taylor Road, Gavin Road, and other smaller roads feeding off of it before getting to our house, picking up the Taylors, Bulls, Claytons, Faulks, and Hattens and maybe a few others along the way.
Upper Big Level Community in northeastern Stone County, Mississippi. from the 1949 USGS Topological Map. I’ve added a few road labels and other annotations to help depict the bus route I traversed to and from Home Vocational School in the late ’50s and early ’60s. I chose this 1949 map as it shows (with small, black square dots) most of the home places that existed during my boyhood, including some that are long gone. It also illustrates how sparsely populated the area was 75 years ago. You’ll need to zoom in to see the map more clearly. A few sharp-eyed readers will notice the southerly dip in Highway 26 between Willis Chapel and White’s Crossing. That dip is no longer there, as the highway was straightened in the early 1950s. [https://livingatlas.arcgis.com]
I should pause here and say that very few of the local roads in the rural parts of the county had official names and were referred to variously by whatever the local residents traditionally called them. It wasn’t until the county instituted the 9-1-1 system 30+ years ago that all public roads were formally named. What is now Big Four Road had no name that I knew of when I was a kid. Only recently, when the 1950 U.S. Census records became publicly available, did I discover that this road from town out to the road currently named Oil Well Road was labeled by the census enumerator as the “Wiggins to Misscih Road.” That came as a big surprise to me, for I have never heard of “Misscih” or anyone or anything with anywhere close to such a name. Not in Big Level or elsewhere. When Misscih Road became known as Oil Well Road, I do not know—most likely in the early ’60s when some drilling was done in the area. Despite my best efforts to find some reference to it, the name is still a mystery to me.
From our house, we could see across the open pastures to the Faulk house on Taylor Cemetery Road. When the school bus stopped there, we knew it would only be 4 or 5 minutes before the bus came back around to Big Four and up our lane. It usually arrived about 10 or 15 minutes past 7:00. Often we’d be out by the circle in front of the house waiting for it to come. At other times, the bus would be early and there’d be a mad scramble inside the house, as one of us wasn’t quite ready and still looking for books or finishing getting dressed.
On the bus’s morning run, as we were somewhat near the head of the route, there would be several seats to choose from. Judy would typically sit toward the front, either with Kate Bull or with Mary Ann Lott, who’d board a couple of stops later. Keith would take a seat in the back and wait for Mike and Jerry, our Lott first cousins, who would be picked up next. Their older brother, Wallace, who was in the 9th grade when I started school, also rode the bus my first couple of years. (These boys, and their younger brother, Kenny, were Uncle ’Nell’s and Aunt Reicey’s boys and were more like our brothers than cousins. Their farm was on Big Four Road next to Granddaddy’s place.) I’d sit somewhere in the middle, not too far behind Judy, and wait for Dennis Bond and Joe Breland, my classmates who lived over on Clear Creek Road, to board.
These two snapshots were taken on an early September morning in 1961 at my boyhood home in the upper Big Level community of Stone County, Mississippi. It was the first day of the new school year, or soon after. The photo on the left shows me and my older siblings, Keith and Judy, as we were waiting for the bus to take us to Big Level’s Home Vocational School. I was entering the 3rd grade that year, Keith the 5th, and Judy the 7th. The picture on the right shows my little sister, Karen, not yet 2, standing with me a few moments before the other photo. In the distant background of this photo the rooftop of the Faulk house is visible from which we could see the bus coming. Note, that Keith and I are barefoot, which was typical; at that age, we seldom wore shoes to school in the fall and spring. Also note that I’m taking my new left-hander’s baseball glove to school to play with at recess. And some of you might wonder about that baseball bat Karen is holding. Daddy whittled it for us boys out of a hickory limb. And, yes, the barrel of that homemade bat was just as wonky as it appears in the photo.
After picking up Uncle ’Nell’s boys, we’d come to Oil Well Road. This intersection lies in the middle of the 160 acres homesteaded by my great-grandfather, Elisha William Lott (1850-1904). It is also where my granddaddy and his brother, my Great-uncle Bruner, lived. They both had farms on the old homestead. My daddy and Uncle ’Nell and their sisters, my aunts Ruby and Anna Lois, and my great-uncle Bruner’s children would all catch the bus at that intersection back in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. And what’s more, in 1915, in one of the first years, if not the first, that Home School ran school wagons in the district, Bruner, at age 21, successfully bid one of the five wagon routes going to the school (see the notes section below). Bruner’s younger siblings, Dolph (my granddaddy) and Virgie were still students at the school at the time and they probably rode Bruner’s wagon which would have started at that same intersection. I say probably because the newspaper item reporting the contracts on those five routes does not specify which one Bruner received. But in my mind, Dolph and Virgie were riding with their older brother, traveling many of the same roads my bus took, with Dolph sitting on the buckboard and at times holding the reins.
Just a ways up on Oil Well Road we’d stop for Mary Ann and Thomas Lott, Uncle Bruner’s grandchildren and my second cousins. From there, the bus would turn onto Clear Creek Road, picking up more Taylors, as well as Dennis and Joe and their Bond and Breland siblings, before coming back to Big Four Road and to White’s Crossing and on down a mile or so to the school. The route was reversed when school let out in the afternoon.
When I was in the 6th grade, the route was extended somewhat to pick up the two Parsons boys, whose family moved into the old Loper place, just a half mile from Uncle Bruner’s. The next year the route was lengthened considerably, as we then had to cross over Bluff Creek, going all the way around to Miles Cemetery Road to pick up the Compston boys, who had become of school age, and to get Steve Britt, who had moved in with his grandparents. Their old farm is marked as “Last stop” on the map above. From there, we’d travel down to Moore’s Crossing at Highway 26 and on to the school. I didn’t mind this longer route so much, except in the afternoons when those shorter days of late fall and early winter meant that it got dark so early. I remember sitting in the last class of the day, watching the empty buses pull in and park for loading in front of the ag building. The mid-afternoon sun would be so bright and I would be tricked into thinking about all the time I would have for play once I got home. However, by the time the bus would finally get to my house there’d hardly be enough time to drop my books and grab a quick snack before having to feed the cows and bird dogs and chop some kindling and bring in the firewood before it got dark. How could the sun be so bright at 3:00 and so low in the sky just an hour later. That fact always took me by surprise and invariably dampened my spirits.
With the exception of Highway 26, all of these roads were unpaved dirt and gravel roads when I started school. Many were paved shortly afterward, but a few were still graveled when I stopped riding the bus when I started high school in Wiggins. Those roads were generally in good shape, though dusty when dry and muddy and slippery when not. I can recall several times when after a heavy rain that both Clear Creek and Bluff Creek would overflow their banks and flood the road. Most of the time the driver would ease the bus on across with the water sometimes coming up into the stepwell. On one occasion the water was so high the driver asked one of the older boys to walk across the bridge to test the depth before deciding whether to attempt it with the bus. Wisely, that young driver decided not to try it. That was the only time I remember that we had to turn the bus around and take the long way to finish the route. Most of us didn’t mind being late to school, but when a bus was late, it complicated things. There were always students on the route that, upon getting to Home School, would change buses and continue into Wiggins, where they were enrolled. Sometimes the bus to town couldn’t wait on an MIA bus and other arrangements would have to be made to get those students to their school.
Now back to those bus drivers. It was a common practice throughout my school years, and had been for many years before, at least in Stone County, for the schools to hire high school boys, typically seniors, to drive the buses. This was the case in most other rural school districts in the South. It may have been the national trend. I’ll have to look into that. I don’t know what kind of training was mandated, but I do recall that the drivers were paid upwards of a hundred dollars per month. I don’t remember each of the drivers on my route, but they were all responsible and careful, and I never feared for my safety. One or two of the Taylor boys may have driven for a couple of years—either Larry or his cousins Leroy or Lennis Ray. Roger and Johnny White also drove for a while. Their mother, Eva White, also drove during my 8th-grade year, but she was teaching at Home School at the time and not a student. I’m hoping that some of my older Big Level readers can fill in some of these blanks for me.
I don’t remember his name, but one driver I distinctly recall was a boy from Wiggins who drove for a few months one school year—1963 or ’64, I think—and who would sing popular rock ‘n’ roll tunes to us. He would sing songs like “Walk Like A Man” and “Sealed With A Kiss.” I don’t recall that he sang any Beatles hits, so maybe it was in the fall of ’63 before the Beatles invasion of the following January and February. A particular favorite, one that got a number of repeat requests, was “Love Potion No. 9.” You can imagine how big an impact he made with the girls on the bus, particularly the teenagers. I would really love to know what became of that young man.
Notes: The following items are from my Great-great-uncle Crab Breland’s long-running weekly “Crabology” column in the Biloxi-Gulfport Daily Herald:
23 Jul 1915 p4: Contracts for Home School wagon routes
According to previous notice, the trustees of Home Consolidated school met at the school house last Friday evening and proceeded to sell to the lowest bidder, contracts for running transportation wagons for the coming term of school. Quite a large crowd was present and the bidding was lively, and those who failed to get a contract to run a wagon got fun enough to pay him for his trouble. Five wagons are to be run on as many different routes, all of which were let at prices lower than last year. L. E. Miles grabbled up the first route at $15.50 per month; J. L. Bond took No. 2 at $25.00 even money; A. P. Clayton hammered No. 3, considered the longest and worst route down to $27.50, B. A Lott nabbed No. 4 at $25.00, while Wes Moore took a nice little nine-mile route at $37.00. [Note: Home Consolidated was formed in 1912 and it appears that formal wagon service may have started with these 1915 contracts. Bruner A. Lott, age 21, John L. Bond, 52, and Arthur P. Clayton, 43, were all neighbors in upper Big Level, living within one or two miles of each other. Bruner, my great uncle, was granddaddy’s brother. John Lampkin Bond, my 3rd cousin 2x removed, homesteaded the farm where I grew up.]16 Jul 1918 p2: First school bus for county
J. L. Glass, representing a motor truck company of Gulfport, was in Wiggins the latter part of last week, and with School Superintendent Bass, went out to Magnolia school to demonstrate the working of a large truck which the trustees of that school contemplate buying for school transportation purposes. Mr. Bass tells us that the test was apparently satisfactory, and that this truck, which costs $1950, will do the work of three wagons at a cost for running of about $60 per month, while the three wagons cost $135 per month and in addition will transport the 60 pupils handled by these wagons at a considerable saving in time. There are in all seven wagons run in this district, and the truck, if put on, will take the place of at least three of them. [Note: Magnolia School in the western part of the county was Home School’s chief rival, particularly in Basketball.]14 Sep 1920 p7: Home Consolidated buys school bus
C. D. Bond went to Gulfport last Thursday night to drive back a Ford truck which C. P. Wiggins, one of the trustees of Home Consolidated School, had purchased there, and which will be used for transporting children to and from school. [Note: I have not yet determined how many wagon routes were replaced by this bus or whether it was used on the route by my homeplace.]
As a final note, I should add that my mother and her siblings also attended Home School even though they lived south of Red Creek in the old Beatrice Community near Ramsay Springs. Their farm was on what is now named Cable Bridge Road. Mama attended for 12 years in the 1930s and ’40s, graduating in 1945. That was before additional consolidation sent students from that area to the Perkinston school. Mama’s school bus crossed Red Creek at the old cable bridge that linked Beatrice with lower Big Level. She liked to tell of the times the bus driver would purposely barrel across the bridge causing it to sway even more than was usual, often at the urging and delight of the boys on the bus and the shrieking of the girls. She never mentioned to me if any of her drivers sang to them.
A Word to Ponder
bar·rel (noun):
(1) a cylindrical container bulging out in the middle, traditionally made of wooden staves with metal hoops around them.
(2) a measure of capacity used for oil and beer, usually equal to 36 imperial gallons for beer and 35 imperial gallons or 42 US gallons for oil.
(3) a tube forming part of an object, such as a gun or a pen.
(4) the belly and loins of a four-legged animal such as a horse.
bar·rel (verb): to move or drive in a way that is so fast as to almost be out of control.
www.merriam-webster.com
The meaning of the noun as a “cylindrical vessel or cask” is from the Old French baril (12c.) and brought into English by the Anglo-Normans, but is of unknown origin. The meaning a “tubular-shaped object” is from 1640s. Barrel-roll (n.) in aeronautics is from 1920. To be over a barrel figuratively, “in a helpless or vulnerable condition,” is found by 1914 and might suggest corporal punishment. The verb meaning “to move quickly” is by 1930, perhaps suggestive of a rolling barrel.
www.etymonline.com
Song of the Day
"Love Potion No. 9" by The Searchers (Meet The Searchers, 1963)