When we were kids, because we lived out in the country, we had to ride a school bus to school. Our bus was always Bus 4. Tim and I rode the bus until we started High School, then it was “uncool” to ride to school on a school bus. During our pre-driving to High School days, we hitchhiked or walked to school and even though the school was only a little over a mile from our place, back then it seemed “far away”. When we were in the 7^th and 8^th grades on some days we were allowed to ride our bicycles to school! WOW! What a thrill that was! We really felt “grown up” and cool doing that! That 1-mile to school seemed like a long way to ride on a bicycle. In our senior year of High School when we were old enough to drive, we did the ULTIMATE COOL thing of driving our cars to school! In earlier years, when we HAD to ride on the school bus, Tim and I definitely made “our presence known!” Our bus driver from the 2^nd grade on was Tom Hinman. Tom was the local mortician and I always thought it was odd to have a mortician driving our school bus. I wondered if maybe he didn’t have enough “business” to make enough money to live on or what? When one of us would “act up”, Tom would stop the school bus and walk fast back to the seat where the “offender” was sitting. He never hit us or anything, but just the fact that he walked really fast back to our seat was enough to put us in our place. The biggest offense was talking too loudly or yelling. Boy, have times ever changed! Now days school bus drivers have to put up with kids swearing at them and/or smoking dope and/or freebasing heroin, and a gaggle of other outrageous actions. He can’t even “walk fast” back to their seat because he, the school, the school board, the guy that fuels the buses, and the manufacturer of the school bus would all be sued by the parents of their little “angels”. When we were in the 3^rd or 4^th grade, in order to prevent us from misbehaving (which we did anyway), Tom made it a rule that all the boys had to sit on one side of the bus, and all the girls on the other side. This was just as well, because in those days we boys all thought (read knew) every girl had “Cooties”, and that he was doing us a favor by keeping the girls away from us. When the weather was warm, we all thought it was neat to open the bus windows. They only went ½ way down and had a maximum opening of about 10 inches or so. I could never figure out why they didn’t open any wider accept maybe it prevented boys from committing suicide by jumping out of the window if they should happen to touch a girl and get “Cooties”. Sometimes, in the winter on cold days, we would open the windows just to be mischievous and Tom would do his “fast walk” to our seats. By the time he got there, the window was up. When we would talk too loudly, Tom would yell at us and say, “PIPE DOWN!!!!” Most of the time if we didn’t “pipe down”, he would stop the bus and wait until we all “piped down”. A lot of us “piped up” since that meant that we’d get to school later! Talk about counterproductive actions on Tom’s part! Eventually, we all quieted down and Tom would slowly start the bus moving again. The faster the bus started going, the louder our talking got until we were all right back where we had started! He had a mirror above his head that was the longest and biggest one I have ever seen in a vehicle. We could see his face every time he looked at us in the mirror. It seemed like every 2 or 3 seconds he was looking in the mirror at us. I wonder now how he managed to keep the bus on the road! I guess bus drivers just have an inherent sense of direction. Tim and I were the first on the bus in the morning on the way to school and the last off after school on the way home (go figure). That really made the school days seem a lot longer. No doubt, that was yet another major conspiracy against me because I “acted up” so much. Since we were the first on, we would always head for the very back seat since we figured we could get away with more capers and when Tom did his “fast walk” back to our back seat, we had a lot of time to stop whatever it was we were doing. One time our “back seat” location resulted in dire consequences. In those days, playing marbles was the “in” thing to do among grade school kids. Our Grandmother Sommers made Tim and I each a marble bag to keep all of our massive cache of marbles in. They had a drawstring top and were really big. The bags were bulging, being filled with all of our marbles. One day, while sitting in our usual back seat, Tim opened the marble bag and stood it on his lap to muse over all his marbles. The bus did a sudden stop while traveling at “highway speed” and the bag tipped over and ALL of Tim’s marbles came out of the open bag and rolled under the seats all the way to the front of the bus! That time Tom didn’t even do his “fast walk” back to our seat. I think he realized that it was partially his fault because of the sudden stop he had to make, probably to avoid hitting a dog or cat crossing the road in front of him. When we got to school all the kids pitched in to help gather up all the marbles. Although I think that most of the boys helped so they could “filch” some extra marbles. In the wintertime when the bus would let us out at home after school, Tim would ALWAYS throw snowballs at the bus windows as it pulled away. I’m surprised that Tom didn’t stop the bus and get out and do his “fast walk” toward Tim. Maybe he figured since we were at home we were on “protected ground”. I still see Tom every now and then and I’m still afraid if I talk too loudly that he will do his “fast walk” toward me! If my wife is sitting next to me (I’m immune to “Cooties” by now), I’m even tempted to tell her to sit on the other side of the room!  As a postscript, when we were kids the school had 8 school buses and only 1 woman driver, the rest were always men. Now days they’re ALL women. Why don’t any men drive School buses these days???? Yet ANOTHER thing I have to add to my “Life’s Mysteries List”. Oh well, Que Sera Sera (For another story touching on this same subject), see “The Day Tim Lost His Marbles”