"The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round" (11/20/99)

By Dave Haupt

One of the major downers of growing up in the country was being forced to ride the school bus twice a day until that glorious time when a Learner's Permit enabled us to drive ourselves. (This was not enough to rescue my unfortunate sister, Paulette. As I recall, my parents made her ride the bus clear through high school.) To make matters worse, because I played sports I had to take countless other bus trips to far-away places like Highmore, Onida, Melette and Britton (all about 100 miles). These were character building years indeed.

My very first memory of riding the bus was in the fall of 1965. I was a second grader, going to school in town for the first time. My older brother, Gerry, was a senior, but happened to be riding the bus on this particular morning. Having enjoyed a nutritious breakfast of those good old toasted "O's", I began to feel a bit queasy a mere 10 minutes into the trip to town. The bus had just turned west onto the black-topped Long Lake road and was headed for the Gideon and Calvin Dais farms when the Cheerios decided they had been in my stomach long enough! I had been seated near the middle of the bus and the response of my 20-or-so fellow travelers was to pack themselves into the two far back seats and two far front seats. Only my big brother dared come near me. Since my clothes were now ruined for the day, it was decided to leave me at the Gideon Dais house, and call my mom. I'm sure Mrs. Dais couldn't wait for Mom to arrive.

From that time on I lived in constant fear of that episode being repeated. Many mornings I feigned illness while still at home so I wouldn't have to get on board the bus. And, of course, I was not the only kid with this problem. "Hurling" was quite common during the morning bus rides. "Who would be next?" we all wondered.

Then there were the mornings that Paulette and I would oversleep. My mom seldom got angry, but when she came into the house from doing chores five minutes ahead of the school bus's scheduled arrival time and found her two juvenile delinquents still in their beds, holy cow, it got really loud in the house. Somehow we always managed to get ready in time, but I'm sure these would have qualified as "bad hair days" for my sister.

Then there was the winter when we set the all-time Eureka Public School record for getting stuck. We had a Mr. Mehlhaff as our driver that year, and he was a really nice guy, but a bad luck cloud sort of hovered over us all winter. As if getting stuck in snow drifts wasn't enough, one day we were cruising along and both of the duals on the rear right side of the bus fell off. As we came bouncing and skidding to a stop I remember seeing one wheel rolling past us, down the ditch, and hopping over a barbed wire fence and into a pasture. Then there was the time the bus just never showed up, and as parents on our route began to call one another the news eventually got to everyone that there had been an accident. The bus had tipped over somewhere on the North Dakota state line road. Luckily there were no serious injuries, although I think one boy did break his arm.

Normally our bus route stayed about the same from year to year. But one year it shifted and we journeyed farther east and southward to the Nies, Opp, Hilgeman and Koerner farms. Two things stand out about that year. One was that I was always pretty sure we were going to someday have a head-on collision on the very narrow, very hilly graveled road between our place and the farm on which Alton Nies grew up. (We never did.) The second thing I remember is our morning card games of "High-Low-Jack". Larry Jundt and I were always partners, and our opponents were always Alton and Darold Nies. And Larry and I always lost. This is not an exaggeration. We ALWAYS lost. One memorable morning when it looked as if our fortunes were about to change, Darrold bid "4" on a hand in which all he held was the 4 and 9 of clubs. He then drew the ace, a face card and another point card, and of course Alton had everything else they needed, and Larry and I lost again. Larry and I were like Charlie Brown's baseball team -- we couldn't win, but we couldn't quit playing. Paulette used to ask me, "Why don't you just not play?" But we couldn't help ourselves. The game was bigger than us!

Finally in high school it was the bus trips with the football and basketball teams. These were not nearly so unpleasant as my grade school experiences although invariably there would be some idiot who would bless us all with his flatulent behavior. You never saw 30 bus windows open so fast! My fondest memory of traveling with the teams is courtesy of none other than Wayne Isaak. The bus driver for most of the athletic events had the nickname of "Sowbelly." He was a great guy, so this is in no way meant to be disrespectful. Anyway, a popular song of that era went something like this: "Sky-y-y Pilot, how far can you fly?" and so on. Well, one day Wayne started singing, "Sow-ow-ow Belly, how far can you drive?" And this struck me as funny. And, to this day, I still sing the Wayne Isaak version of that song in my head. In fact, I had added words to it. Since the State B tournament was always in Sioux Falls in those days, my version went like this: "Sow-ow-ow Belly, how far can you drive? Will you ever, ever, ever reach Sioux Falls?" During my high school career we never did reach Sioux Falls. But it just doesn't matter because, you know what? I never have to ride on a stupid school bus again.

(Dave Haupt grew up on a farm near Eureka and graduated from EHS in 1976 and from Northern State University. Today he lives in Ord, Neb., where he is an officer of the First National Bank of Ord. You can email Dave at [email protected])