School Buses and Discipline

The school buses that transported the rural children were rather a motley assortment of vehicles. The older buses were to all appearances sort of “home-made” contrivances with the bus part fabricated of wood and set on some sort of small truck chassis. These were relatively small and could perhaps carry at most a dozen or perhaps a dozen and a half children.

The seats ran along the sides of the bus and sometimes late-boarding children would have to stand. Entry as I recall was through a door at the rear of the bus. These older buses were painted black. There were several designs of newer buses, colored orange or yellow that were larger and more elegant in construction. Children riding these were envied by those consigned to the older buses.

After our family moved out to the Peterson farmstead during the Depression (between my 7th and 8th grade years in junior high) we of course rode the school bus morning and afternoon. The first few years we were on the farm we rated only one of the older buses.

One of the experiences indelibly etched on my memory is one of these older buses getting stuck in a snowdrift about a quarter of a mile or so west of the Peterson farm. The time was late morning — the school day had begun normally but a fast-moving blizzard had caused the school officials to send the buses out early to beat the storm. At least for the bus carrying us the storm moved in too fast. The bus driver at the time was Ernest Anderson who happened to be a brother of the Carl Anderson who at the time was renting the old Woodard place just adjoining the Peterson farm and west of it. Ernest left the bus leaving the children, walked to his brother Carl’s place and Carl drove out with a bobsled to carry us children the rest of the way home. I can recall huddling under some sort of tarp in the bobsled.

Later on we were favored by having one of the newer buses. By present-day standards the buses, particularly the older ones, would be considered grossly unsafe but during the years they were in sue there were no untoward occurrences. Contributing to the absence of incidents was the low speeds the buses operated at (probably they didn’t exceed 35 mph at their highest speed) and the light and slow traffic they encountered in the town of Gowrie and on the rural roads.

The bus driver, in addition to piloting the bus, was the disciplinarian in charge and the children riding were quite aware of it. The threat of being put off the bus to walk (as Mr. McCubbin, one of the drivers of the bus we used once threatened) was enough to quell any juvenile misconduct. In exercising discipline he was certainly confident of being backed up in his actions by the school superintendent and the school board.

During my school days in Gowrie there was no possibility that the school discipline would be challenged by pupils or for that matter by their parents. Indeed most parents exercised a stricter standard than anything imposed by the school authorities. I am reminded of an incident that I heard of secondhand. The senior class in the high school had over the years developed the tradition of a “skip day” late in their last year. Theoretically this was against school policy as an unexcused absence, but its occurrence each year was winked at by the school.

When two children of a local farmer (by name Warner Lanson, who resided a mile north and somewhat west of the Peterson homestead) found out in some way that two of his children (twins) were expecting to participate in this event, he informed the bow twin that he could very well spend the day hauling out manure and he told his wife that if she had trouble keeping the girl twin at work, the girl could join her brother in pitching manure.