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Lessons
Learned Riding School Bus Last a Lifetimeby Delbert Trew
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I
learned everything I needed to know to get along in life while riding
a yellow school bus.
My father, J.T. Trew, drove a Perryton school bus for many years during
the late 1930s. This usually meant I was the first to get on the bus
and the last to leave.
Although we lived only 15 miles from town, the bus route often covered
more than 60 miles each morning and each evening. Since this was before
Farm-to-Market highways were invented, the route was almost all dirt
and when it rained became black gumbo mud.
Our first school bus featured padded bench seats along each side wall
with the exhaust pipe running through the middle of the floor topped
with a grill to keep from burning your shoes. You sat with feet braced
against the grill to stay warm and to keep from falling off the bench.
As I matured, I learned about class distinction by staring out sitting
just behind Dad during the first grade, then across the aisle in the
second grade, back a row or two in the third, and finally graduating
to freedom to sit where I liked during the fourth grade.
I learned about segregation when rowdy boys, couples a bit too loving,
and friends making too much noise were ordered to distant, individual
seating. Patience and endurance were acquired as the long, bumpy miles
passed slowly beneath the wheels. At times, I felt as if I spent half
of my life riding the bus, for in the wintertime we left before daylight
and returned home after dark.
I saw discipline in action as Dad gave stern lectures, made others
walk the last mile to their homes and once put two big boys off the
bus to fight it out in the ditch while the rest watched through the
windows.
Manners, etiquette and the powers of the opposite gender were taught
as all of us said "Yes sir, yes ma'am," let the girls go first, all
the while observing the girls could get by with almost anything.
Witnessing an act of sexual harassment and the resulting punishment
left me impressed until today. A boy kept touching the posterior of
a girl in the next seat ahead. After two unheeded warnings, a world
history book flattened his nose flush with his cheeks and sent him
to the hospital. That taught me every action could trigger a reaction
and to keep my hands to myself.
Although the school bus journeys were long and arduous, it was much
better than the lot of my parents who had to walk or ride horses to
school, or my grandparents who were fortunate to get any education.
© Delbert
Trew
"It's All Trew"
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August 26, 2005 column
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