The Wayward Bus

In my senior year of high school I turned 18 on February 4, 1948.  This made me eligible to get a chauffeur's license which I did because the principal of the high school, Frank Thomas got me a job driving a school bus. The principal liked me because I played football, was his student body president and was not a trouble-maker. My route to pick up and deliver young scholars to the schoolhouse conveniently followed the roads leading to my home seven miles west on the Redwood Highway.  After my last student was safely delivered to his/her home I would park the bus in a field across from where I lived and then retrace the route the next morning.  With a $50.00 payday that was one sweet deal.

My young bus riders were enthusiastic fans of the driver (me) because every after-school day was race day between our bus and a bus driven by another Frank Thomas favorite student that went south and east of town.  Grants Pass at that time had 6th street with four traffic lanes going through the center of town; two going north,  two going south and both of us had to go south through town where two lanes became one to cross the Caveman Bridge. The race was on to challenge that bottleneck.

Another factor affecting the race was all the citizen drivers who were desperate to not get stuck behind a school bus that stops at every mailbox to let some kid off.  They, too, joined the race to the single lane bottleneck at the Caveman bridge.

Those busses were real rattlers, big yellow hulks that let you know they were coming.  As the two drivers jockeyed for lanes to arrive first at the bridge, the occupants of both busses were wildly into the action with stomping feet and pounding on the metal side panels under the windows.  Not to mention  screaming at the driver by both boys and girls to go faster.  Rolling pandemonium. YeeHaww!!!  Some days we won.  Other days we lost (some citizen stopping in my lane to park). Those appointed rounds were never dull.  Hell riders to the bridge.