Peter Macklin, a recent arrival to Western Canada back in September 1960, and I share fond memories of our first day of school. Peter was beginning his job as a full-time bus driver and I was finally old enough to start grade one. Although I couldn’t wait to climb those bus steps, my older brothers, Bob and Art, probably didn’t share my enthusiasm.
Peter, a native of the Bailiwick of Jersey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France, had signed up to maneuver a clunky vehicle much larger than those he drove back home. In all kinds of weather, he was to navigate his yellow bus over gravel roads that only a few years before had not been much more than trails cut through the brush.
With kindness and humor, he delivered his “kids,” as he called us elementary and junior high students, to and from school safely. It is no wonder that he became our lifelong friend.
Since this is Peter’s story, I’m going to let him tell it, complete with the Canadian spelling of certain words.
Peter Explains How He Came to Drive a School Bus
If you are new to a rural area in Canada and keen to get to know the neighbors, there can be no better way to do so than to get a job as a school bus driver. In the late 1950s, I came to stay with my uncle and aunt, Hugh and Dessa Macklin, on their farm not far from Calgary, Alberta. They truly lived in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Many of the landholders were descendants of the original settlers.
One of my cousins, Alec Macklin, was one of the Red Deer Lake School bus drivers. Since he wanted to miss the odd day, he persuaded me to get a license to drive a bus. My test consisted of a vision check, a road sign recognition test and a short drive through the suburbs of Calgary while the examiner ate his lunch.
That’s all it took for me to get a class one license. Not only did it qualify me to drive a school bus, but also an ambulance or fire engine.
The next step was for me to take a trip as a passenger with Alec on his bus route. After that, I climbed into the bus driver’s seat once in a while.
With the commencement of the new school year in 1960, I became a full-time driver. It was important for me to leave home at the same time each morning and drive at a leisurely pace to make the pickups on time at each place. Since some farms had fairly long driveways, I did not want the children standing in the cold too long.
Many families could see the bus coming in time to dash out and meet it. One family, who lived at the end of a long drive, had no way of knowing if the bus was on its way. The Taylor kids kept the makings for a fire at the gate. Elaine covered that story in her blog post.
Even with the best of intentions, it was sometimes impossible to be on time. Even though the roads were supposed to all be graveled, there were places where that gravel was not very evident. I recall once my speedometer indicated we had traveled over two miles churning through the mud. Actually, we had covered less than a half-mile.
At a few places on my bus route, it was necessary to turn around to backtrack. Because it was illegal to back onto a road, I would back up into those gateways. One foggy morning, I mistook the gateposts and backed into the ditch.
However, the body configuration of a school bus had far better traction than a truck. By distributing the passengers in a different seating arrangement, I drove right out.
Peter Recalls Getting Stuck Now and Then
In my first winter of driving, the snow would sometimes drift and we would be stuck. I kept two or even three shovels on the bus so that the bigger boys could help me shovel our way out. We once got stuck in a long, hard drift up near what is now the Leighton Centre.
It looked like it would require a long, hard shoveling job.
We were all glad to see the high school bus coming from the other direction. Onboard were a number of bigger boys who willingly jumped out to help with the shoveling.
In later years, the grader operator came to live near me and, since he did not want his kids to miss school, he plowed out my route first. I appreciated that.
The acoustics in a bus are very good so I could often hear quiet conversations going on in the back. I never let on but it did not take me long to get to know each individual passenger. Over a year or two, I silently amassed a story about each one. Although these tales remain locked in my memory as the individuals would easily be identified by other bus riders of that era.
Although discipline was not a problem, occasionally the bus would get too noisy. I’d tell the kids to hold it down. A funny thing about the noise is it would gradually build as children got on in the morning. However, it would not diminish in the afternoon until the second to the last kid got off.
I swept out the bus each day and the number of leftover sandwiches that I found annoyed me. A little humor helped me get my point across. One afternoon I stood up from my seat at the front of the bus after all the kids had loaded up at the school. That was very unusual for me to do.
I asked the kids to stop leaving food on the bus because I swept out their leftovers to my chickens. Tipping my head and scraping the roof of my mouth with my finger, I indicated what a challenge it was for a chicken to eat peanut butter. They loved my demonstration.
After that, there was rarely anything but some mud on wet days for me to sweep out.
The other bus drivers and I often were asked to attend school events. That is where I met the parents and the neighbors. Fortunately, the kids had already given a good report so the parents were keen to meet me. I easily made friends.
Peter Remembers Local Gatherings
Red Deer Lake Hall, an old community center near the school, did not have a drinking water source. Since people knew I had a good well and came to the school every afternoon anyway, they would ask me to bring a milk can of water for the evening event or ‘do,’ as these get-togethers were called.
Being single, I am not sure how I got involved in a parent/teacher meeting to plan a school Halloween party. As the weather was expected to be bad, it was to be held in the school. During a discussion about the contents of gift packages for the kids, gum came up.
One wise mother said, ‘Gum? We’ll be scraping it up for a week.’ I agreed.
Some of the neighbours near my age used to play badminton in the Red Deer Lake Hall until we got invited to use the school gym. What a difference in playing style that represented. In the hall, we made fast, low shots so as not to hit the ceiling. However, in the gym, the high shots gave us lots of time to get set to make the return shot.
An older (60 or so) bandy-legged man, who walked rather stiffly, sometimes came to play. However, with a racquet in his hand, he became so spry he could not be beaten.
Being a school bus driver also meant associating with the teachers who took their students on field trips to places like the Calgary Zoo and sports games at other schools. Occasionally, we were asked to render special assistance such as providing battery-powered spotlights for a nighttime outdoor skating carnival.
There was no such thing as the LED lights that we have available today, so I strategically positioned my school bus in front of the rink. Then I turned on its headlights to light up the ice. Of course, that meant my bus had to run through the entire program. Its battery would have run down otherwise.
I met a first-year teacher named Miss Raycraft, who was hardly much older than the grades seven and eight pupils she taught. She played badminton and danced with me at the hall ‘do’s and one thing led to another.
On my last bus trip before Miss Raycraft and I got married, a car passed our bus honking like mad. The kids had hung a sign on the back that said: “ABOUT TO BE MARRIED.”
See, I told you at the beginning of my story that there’s no better way to meet the right people than to be a school bus driver. Warm regards, Peter
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You might also enjoy some of my other posts about rural Texas life:
Thank you, Peter, for sharing your memories of the first year you drove the school bus that my brothers and I rode. Those were good times! Readers, do you have a favorite memory from your early school days?
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Mr. Ellis drove our school bus as well as selling Fuller Brushes and delivering the dry cleaning to our house. Most of the moms did not drive so errands were run on the weekends. We did not have a lot of acreage but had chickens, a garden and close neighbors. I have researched the ancestry for most of the neighbors I grew up with and all but one were from Fayette county. I loved growing up in this neighborhood.
Good memories, aren’t these Gesine? It’s interesting that most of the moms in your neighborhood didn’t drive. That wouldn’t work well these days would it? Thank you for sharing your memories of the neighborhood where you grew up.
Another great story, Elaine, of your young life in Alberta and a story of another friend you are still in contact with today. That is YOU–your personality! Anyone who meets you remains a friend forever. Thank YOU, Peter, for bringing your own nostalgic memories to this beautiful story. I think I told you, Elaine, that I am sending in a piece about my first grade school days after reading last month’s “Freyburg School” story. Though over 350 miles apart, my school and those of Fayette County were not so very different. Thanks, again, for the memories!
Brenda Miles
I’m glad you enjoyed Peter’s memories. They were really fun for me to read. I’d still like to know what stories he had in his head about each of the kids on his bus. I know he will never tell, though! It was a very special time. For those of us who lived a long distance from the school, he helped us get our education.
Loved this story, Elaine! We lived on a ranch in South Texas that wasn’t too far from the school that offered 1st through 8th grade. Some of the children on the ranch lived three miles from the main road, so there was something similar to a 12-passenger van that one of the ranch workmen (Amancio Garza) drove to pick up all the ranch children (including the 3 of us) and bring them to the school and back each day. The county high school was in a town 20 miles away, so starting in 9th grade, we rode a regular yellow school bus from the local school to the high school each day. The drivers were always so nice, but didn’t put up with any bad behavior. In that sparsely populated rural area, everyone knew everyone, so anything out of line that you did would get back to your family quickly! The drivers were all wonderful, caring people.
Chris, it’s interesting to know that you, too, have fond memories of the years you rode a school bus and the people who drove them. What a great service they provided and really treated us like members of their family! I don’t recall anyone ever getting left at school and I know lots of times the bus would wait for a youngster that was flying up their driveway after getting a little late start getting out of the house. Thanks for sharing your memory!
Mr. Maklin’s story reminds me of my first school bus driver, Mr. Janda. He was quiet, courteous but stern, always on time and looked after us kids as if we were his own. A great role model.
Yes, Cliff, it does sound like Mr. Janda, Peter Macklin and his cousin Alec were all cut from the same piece of cloth. What a great sense of community their TLC represented! We appreciated it then and now.
When I hit second grade, my poor mom and I had a daily battle of wills for the first months of the school year that usually ended with her literally dragging me onto the school bus. It had absolutely nothing to do with the driver, but rather a change of teachers. My first grade teacher was a wonderful young nun who knew how to draw out, engage and encourage a shy little girl. But the nun who taught second grade had no patience for such nonsense. Instead of helping me when I struggled with the transition from printing to writing cursive, she punished me. My parents, rightfully, didn’t accept “I don’t like my teacher” as a legitimate reason for not wanting to go the school, but at that age I lacked the communication skills to fully explain. It wasn’t until I got my first report card with an uncharacteristically low grade for writing that the full story came out. I don’t know what transpired between the nun and my parents, but a détente of sorts was reached, and Mom no longer had to wrestle me onto the bus. I don’t remember who the driver was, but I’m sure he was relieved to no longer have to witness that spectacle every day.
Oh, Jo, what a memory! I can see in my mind’s eye your daily struggle with your mom so you wouldn’t have to undergo a teacher that wasn’t supportive. Wouldn’t it have been fun to hear what went on at that parent-teacher conference? Perhaps one day your mom will tell you! Thanks for sharing this story!
Another wonderful story! It brought smiles to my face!
Thanks, Anne. It’s always a delight to make a reader like you smile.
Oh Elaine, your story was like watching a movie! It all came to life as I read through it. I really enjoyed reading it. A wonderful story as always. I only lived one block from my elementary school, so I walked each day to and from.
Thanks so much, Denise. I told Peter he was a great storyteller and your response underscores my view! I’m so glad you could relate even though you walked one block to your elementary school.
Fun story, Elaine! Interesting to read the bus driver’s side of the job.
I remember riding my bike to elementary school, riding the Houston city bus to junior High and then riding a Greyhound bus to boarding school. I was never able to bond with any of the many bus drivers, but I do have great respect for them.
This gentleman sounds like a kind and caring bus driver. It would have been a treat to ride his bus!
Wow, Susan, you have laid out a writing prompt that tracks some big changes in your young life. Maybe you’ll follow it one day and tell us more!
We were, indeed, lucky to have Peter and all the other bus drivers that drove our route over the years. I realize now that their care was an important aspect of our youth. Thanks for writing!