as told by Barbara McDonald
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| Barbara is 3 rows up on the left |
Anyone who will drive an enclosed metal container with a passel of children ranging from four year old preschoolers to eighteen year old “adults” seated behind them has superhero powers beyond those of ordinary people. School bus drivers vigilantly negotiate 20 to 30 tons of steel through traffic and weather while arbitrating low grade crimes from seat stealing to snack theft, consoling sad or sick children, waiting for late-comers, and sometimes pulling over and walking down the aisle like Moses parting the sea - to break apart a ruckus.
The bus driver is often the first adult to greet a child whose parents have departed early for work; their smiles and greetings frame many children’s days. The school bus driver’s skills are similar to those of referees, therapists, comedians and detectives, i.e., overhearing “Uh oh - what’s that smell?” coming from a rider a few rows down the aisle. The patience and kindness of the adult dealing with the chaos of children’s lives can affect them for a lifetime.
My mother, Barbara, had such a memorable bus driver. During the 1940’s, the country was in the middle of World War II and it was difficult to find someone to drive the bus. Most of the men who were old enough to drive had been drafted or joined the service.
Seventeen year old males could sign up with parental consent; some young boys had no birth certificates and lied about their ages to lenient recruiters. Men as old as 45 were drafted depending on the skills the military needed to fight the fascists in Europe and the Far East.
Farmers and ranchers who lived in the Sacramento Mountains were exempt from the draft - they had a nation and warriors to feed; these men worked from dawn to dark and had no time left to drive a bus through the mountains twice a day. Many women did not drive at the time and they had families and field work to take care of at home.
The community population was depleted to women, children, boys too young and men too old to serve, and farmers and ranchers. The bus driver who was hired to take the mountain children to school was exempt from the war because he had Strabismus - his eyes were crossed - one eye looked toward his nose and one eye looked straight ahead. His name was Burr Polson and he always had a big, big, cigar clamped in his mouth.
Burr was one of the most respected men in the Sacramento Mountains. The remote, narrow, canyon dirt roads near Cloudcroft had very little traffic, so no one worried that his slightly imperfect vision would cause a problem. The children liked Burr - his children were grown and gone and he had the patience of a saint with his new young charges. He combined his bus driving job with delivering the U.S. Mail - the routes were the same.
My mother told me Burr had a funny way of laughing; it was a process of silent chuckles. His face would light up; a broad grin would appear around his cigar; his fat belly would jiggle like Jello but he made no chuckling sounds.
The school bus was not really a bus but an old delivery truck with two wooden benches attached length-wise along each side that the children sat upon. Seatbelts were unheard of in those days so they bounced along the rough, potholed roads, the truck sometimes having to back up or down if they met another vehicle that needed to pass. The bus route went through the upper Rio Peňasco Canyon, Wills Canyon, then to Cloucroft via Cox Canyon. At any given time, no more than a dozen children were on the bus.
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| Delivery Truck/School Bus |
There was a saw mill in Wills Canyon. Employees of the mill provided the bus with a few young passengers, but their population was transient and the children did not often last a school year before their families moved on. Most of the bus riders were children from farm and ranch families that had lived in the area for several generations.
Burr Polson was also the U.S. Mail Carrier for that same route, and sorting mail would always be the chore of one of the older children. Barbara loved that job. She sat importantly in the big front bench seat and at each stop she would get out of the bus and fold the seat forward so her school mates could enter or exit. There were only two exits, the passenger and driver side doors.
There were two big doors at the rear of the bus that could be opened from the inside but they were tied together with a rope on the outside handles because they had a tendency to fly open. The opportunity to sort mail, see who and where the neighbors’ letters were coming from, to spot an envelope rimmed in black which was a death notice, or to read the postcards from far off places made the job of getting in and out of the bus a small price to pay for Barbara to know what was going on in the entire world.
Riding this bus was a great adventure; it was a microcosm with its own social hierarchy, drama, giggling, gossiping, and occasional outbreaks of romance. Barbara first experienced puppy love on the bus. Sitting next to a boy on the bench near the back of the bus was a great place to hold hands discretely under a folded jacket and to exchange whispered secrets. She also experienced her first heartbreak and betrayal when her best friend sat beside her sweetheart in the back of the bus with a folded jacket over their knees.
Burr’s vision problems did at times have its drawbacks. One morning as the bus neared the road at Cloudcroft, a log train approached very slowly down the tracks. Burr stopped the bus to wait for the train to pass. The train chugged along in front of the bus and caught the bumper and part of the truck hood on the side of the engine.
The vehicle was dragged in slow motion down the track until the old “bus” gave up and turned loose of its front end. Burr’s depth perception did not work very well and he had mistakenly parked the front of the bus on the train tracks. No one was injured but they were somewhat shaken up from being tossed around like ping pong balls inside the truck.
The incident happened only a short distance from the schoolhouse so the students walked the rest of the way hoping they would be dismissed for the day because of the collision. They sat at their desks and discovered it would require something much more serious than a train/bus wreck to get a day off from school.
It was not always driver’s vision errors that caused bus incidents. One extremely cold, snowy morning, Burr stuffed rags in all the cracks and openings in the bus to help the tiny, overworked heater to keep them warm. They were warm and toasty, so much so that they became drowsy and by the time the bus arrived at school, all of the children were asleep.
They were actually not sleeping but were slowly being asphyxiated by exhaust leaks of carbon monoxide which the heater was drawing into the vents. When Barbara awoke, she was being rolled in the snow by the school superintendent. Cold air and snow finally revived everyone, but they were dizzy and had terrible headaches. They were allowed to lay their heads on their desks for the rest of the school day and discovered it would require something much more serious than CO2 poisoning to get a day off from school.
One morning on the first curve just east of Carrie and Leon Green's house in Cox Canyon, the bus slid off the icy road and became stuck on the side of the road. A dump truck was headed up the canyon so Burr got out of the bus anticipating help from the truck driver who was struggling his way up the slick road and he did not see Burr standing beside the bus.
The driver didn't stop hoping to make it to the top of the hill, and as the truck passed by, Burr slipped on the ice and slid under the truck's back wheels. The truck driver was unaware he had run over Burr's legs and he kept going. His legs were badly broken; the students managed to get him in the back doors of the bus and he lay on the delivery truck slats while one of the older boys ran to a nearby ranch for help.
Burr was taken to the hospital. The children were driven on to school and discovered it would require something much more serious than the trauma of watching your bus driver getting run over by a dump truck, hefting him into the back of the truck, and running several miles for help to get a day off from school.
On another occasion a car had stopped and in the shady bend of the road; the driver was changing a flat tire. The early morning sun was shining through a dirty windshield into Burr's one crossed and one uncrossed eyes. He didn't see the car and ran head on into it. As usual, Barbara was sitting in the front seat. The impact threw her into the instrument panel; the car rolled and she was upside down on the floor with the folding front seat over her. She had a huge knot on her head, a split lip, and bruises.
The only way out was through a side window because the back door was tied together with a rope. A small boy who had a pocket knife was hoisted through the window and told to cut the rope on the back door so it could be opened. The smell of gas and the sound of gas splashing out of the old truck caused Burr to yell at the boy to “Hurry it up.”
The boy came back to the window and calmly told Burr that he was trying to untie the knot because it was a “new rope.” He was commanded to “cut it now!” He cut the new rope, they opened the doors and the students and driver made their way out of the bus.
The crash happened near the beginning of the school route so there were only a few students on the bus at the time. No one was seriously injured but Barbara’s face looked a bit like a train wreck. The bus was hauled off and needed serious repairs. They happened to be near Barbara’s grandparent’s house and her grandfather came up, loaded up the children and Burr, and took them back to their homes, then he went back to his farm work.
Barbara spent the rest of the day with her grandmother; as the day wore on her bruises became more visible. Her recounting of the day’s adventure grew more grave and graphic and Little Grandma (as she was known due to her height) nursed Barbara’s wounds better than the Mayo Clinic and provided much sympathy and made all of her tragic patient’s favorite foods for her. There was much drama and commiseration and tending after wounds.
Apparently, the way to get a day off school was to be in the front seat of a head on crash, roll the vehicle into a ditch, cut a brand new rope, nearly total the mail truck/school bus, and be rescued by your grandparents who thought you should probably just spend the rest of the day on their farm instead of sitting in your desk with a cut lip.
The school bus was put back together and Burr started his mail/school children delivery service back up. Sometimes he would let two kids crowd into the coveted front seat. It was really special when Barbara and her friend, Billy Peek, got to share the front bench seat.
Burr never interrupted their serious and silly conversations as they discussed secrets about the boys they liked or the mean girls they didn't like at the moment. They fussed and experimented with each other's makeup and hair as they were being chauffeured around the bouncy mountain roads of their kingdom.
Billy was staying the night at Barbara’s the night her brother Toby was killed. along with two seniors, in a car accident. Billy’s parents came to fetch her and told them all the horrifying news.
Toby had ridden the bus with the ranch and farming children all those years. It felt like a giant chasm opened up in the earth when Billy left what was supposed to be an evening of staying up all night, popping pop corn, talking and giggling, just two friends like peas in a pod.
The next morning Billy was not at her bus stop by the mail box but her father was waiting there. He asked Burr if he could ride the school bus to town. Mr Peek explained that his car was not in running condition and he needed to make funeral arrangements for his son. Barbara opened the door, folded the seat forward and sat in the back on one of the wooden benches with the other students. The grieving man sat in the coveted front seat beside Burr.
Not a word was spoken by the children that morning. They strained to hear the conversation between Burr and Mr. Peek. The men discussed the particulars about the accident, spoke about Toby, too young, just getting started, they talked about better places and God, tears streaming down their faces.
Barbara learned that day the extent of Burr's compassion and wisdom. They were all desperately seeking answers about the tragic deaths of the older boys that they so admired. It was the conversation between the father of a dead boy and a bus driver that settled the fears Barbara had experienced the night before.
Burr dropped the children off at school and took Mr. Peek on to do the overwhelming task he needed to do. The students sat in their desks and glanced painfully around at the desks that sat empty.
The long bus ride to Cloudcroft and back each day was an education in itself. During World War II, bubblegum was almost impossible to come by. If by rare chance someone acquired a piece of gum, everyone would share it. Each person would have an allotted amount of time to chew and Burr would be the timekeeper. His big belly jiggled and he silently chuckled behind his big cigar as he timed the children on his watch.
Another time, the older boys stealthily passed around very risque postcards that one of them had acquired in Juarez. The El Paso warehouses and cattle market were near the border and after trucking vegetables or cows to the sale barn, it was easy to take the street car over to Mexico and back.
They were sneaking peeks of the cards in the back of the bus and trying to shock the girls (who had apparently never seen females scantily clad in underwear before). It was quite raunchy and the girls were dramatically disgusted with the salacious behavior of the boys! Burr was unaware of the immoral activity in the bus but no one told on the boys.
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| Cloudcroft School |
One day on the way home from school, Burr complained of an upset stomach and stopped several times to get out of the bus and throw up at the side of the road. He finally said he couldn't drive because he was in too much pain. He asked one of the older boys to drive the bus to his son's house several miles away. He went inside his son’s home and the son finished the bus route that day. The next morning the children learned that Burr had died from a heart attack that he had suffered the day before.
They would have other bus drivers, but the gentle kindness of Burr Polson would define every mile into a memory for Barbara on the school bus/mail route where she had dutifully sorted correspondence from soldiers and sailors serving in Europe or East Asia, readable post cards from travelers visiting far away places, and sometimes letters sorrowfully written and mailed in envelopes sealed and rimmed in black.
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| Cloudcroft, NM 1940s |
