The Yellow Bus

I was reminded today of Grandpa’s yellow bus. I saw an old school bus parked in a field with long grass growing up around it. I thought about my Grandpa's bus.

After he retired from farming, my mother's dad drove a school bus for Conestoga Valley School District. He would back it into his driveway at the end of the day, and park it in the same place. He used to keep a large wedge of wood under the rear tire, although it didn’t appear to me that the bus would ever roll anywhere.

I loved that yellow bus. It was a funhouse to me! Grandpa kept the sliding doors slightly ajar, but I was small and had a hard time prying the rubber flaps open to hop aboard. The steps were high and black, and the driver seat was big. I would sit tall in that big seat. He kept a lightweight jacket on the seat-back, and sometimes I would wear it while I pretended to drive the bus. I adjusted the giant overhead mirror so I could see all the way to the back. For many years, my feet could not reach the pedals, but it didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that I could flip all the bright red and yellow switches to make the lights work - headlights, tail lights, hazard lights, warning lights – who knew which was which? Over and over the flashing switches would blink on and off, making a ticking sound like the turn signals, and I would pretend to drive that bus. As best I could, I shifted the long, metal gear shift and flashed those lights, stopping to let imaginary kids in and out of the door with the big black flaps. To close the doors, I had to leave my driver seat and use two hands to maneuver the heavy silver handle. No matter what, I figured as long as that big block of wood was under the tire, I would be okay.

I would run fast up and down the aisle just for the sake of it. Sometimes I would tap the tops of each seat as I ran by to see how fast I could go without missing a seat. And sometimes I would jump out the emergency exit at the back because there was a pretend fire.

Grandpa always kept his bus very clean, and it smelled like vinyl and rubber. I would go from seat to seat and flip the cushions up from the back to find combs, barrettes, chewed gum, sticky dirt-covered sourballs, and pencils in the cracks. I never found money like I wanted to. I also never understood why Grandpa could keep a drawer full of candy in his desk in the house, but never any on that yellow bus for me to eat.

Then there was Easter. Never fail, every year an Easter egg was ALWAYS tucked inside the bus's exhaust pipe for us to find on our hunt. Sometimes there was an egg on the bumper or the tire, but never inside the bus.

Me finding Easter eggs behind the yellow bus, Easter, 1974. 

I remember riding with him one day, in the afternoon. I sat in the seat behind him, against the window. I could look up in the overhead mirror and see Grandpa’s face. I was very quiet, and nobody sat with me that day. Two big kids, probably 5th graders, tapped my head and I turned around in my seat. They asked me what my name was, and if I was a boy or girl. I told them I was a girl and my Grandpa was the bus driver. I must have been five, because that was the year I had a boyish Dorothy Hamill haircut. They were nice, and one of them gave me a ruler. I don’t remember if it was the same time or another time when I was riding the bus, that Grandpa told the kids to behave. Since I was in the front seat I didn’t know what was going on in the back, but I know Grandpa was mad. He told those kids to sit down or he was turning that bus around and going back to the school – Is that what you want? To go back to the school and have your parents come for you??  I was scared because I never heard Grandpa with anger in his voice before that, and probably never after that. Things must have resolved, because he didn’t turn the bus around. I sat there, riding in the seat behind him, watching his face in the overhead mirror. One by one the kids got off the bus until it was just me and Grandpa, riding home.

I was 12 when he died, and the yellow bus disappeared from his driveway. It left behind strange shallow oval divots in the pavement where the tires used to be - a quiet tribute in the blacktop to the man and his bus.

My grandparents, me, and the yellow bus in the background. There are only
two bus pictures in my entire album, both from the same day in 1974.