The escapades of a first camping trip in a converted school bus.
I was just sitting there enjoying my morning coffee, the one small vice I allowed myself since I had to stop eating donuts for breakfast, when several large mustard yellow school busses drove by the window of the small coffee shop. In an instant, my mind had taken me back in time to Southern Arizona and our escapade with a similar but smaller school bus.
It all started while Dad was away on a fishing trip with his boss. We had spotted the bus in a parking lot with a “For Sale” sign in the window. It was cool! It was an older model, late sixties I believe, mustard yellow school bus with the words “Blue Bird” on the body. As a school bus it carried about forty school children, however, now that it was a converted camper, it would only accommodate four, maybe five people.
A full size bed occupied the space that was formerly the rear of the bus. This is where Mom and Dad could sleep. There was also a kitchen table supported by a pole in the floor that was removable. On each side of the bus there were bench type seats where we would sit to eat our meals. In the evening when it was time to go to bed, we would lift the table top off of its pole, remove the pole from the floor, store both the table and pole in the wardrobe and use the seats as beds for us boys to sleep on. The bus had just about all of the comforts of home. It had a refrigerator, propane gas stove, and a sink for washing dishes. There was also a small but adequate bathroom with a toilet, lavatory, and shower. This would be great to use on trips to the mountains, fishing, or hunting for rocks.
Rock hunting was one of our favorite pastimes because we got to do it with our grandmother who also enjoyed finding unusual colored rocks. Rocks in Arizona, were different than any rocks we had ever seen before. Some were deep blue in color, while others had different shades of green throughout the little crevices in the rock. There were also rocks that had a sort of opaque blue-to green color to them. The rock that caught my mother’s eye had a sunny golden color to it giving it the appearance of gold. We would learn later that rocks with the blue color were azurite. Those with the different shades of green were malakite and the rocks that were opaque blue-to green color, turquoise. The rocks with the sunny golden color to them were made of iron pyrite. During the “Gold Rush” days old miners would come across a vein of iron pyrite and think that they had found the “mother lode” due to its sunny golden color. Upon taking their find to the assayer’s office, they would learn that all they discovered was a vein of iron pyrite and thus iron pyrite became known as “fool’s gold.”
All of these rocks were used to make jewelry. There were quite a few jewelry shops in town and stories were told that the owners of these shops were “hippies” (children of rich people living in California or Texas). These wealthy socialites did not want the embarrassment of having it be known that their children were “hippies” so they paid their children to live far away from their social circles.
We couldn’t wait for Dad to get home from his fishing trip so that we could show the camper to him and hope that he would like it as much as we did and buy it on the spot. Dad came home from his three-day fishing trip and before he even made it to the front door, we were on him asking, “we found a neat camper, can we go see it, huh? Please dad, please!” Now Dad, having been in the woods for three days fishing without the comforts of home (no bathroom, shower or other necessities), was not particularly in the mood to have his sons screaming at him, “can we get it dad, can we get it? Can we go now and look at it, please?”
Dad finally spoke and said, “Calm down, calm down. Before we do anything, I need a shower so that I can rid myself of this three-day layer of crud that has built up on me from being out in the boonies.” He went on to say, “Once I have showered, eaten a bite, and feel like a human being again instead of a caveman, I promise, we will go take a look at this bus you are ranting and raving about.”
Dad was true to his word. After he had showered and eaten, we took a drive to see the bus that had been converted into a camper. Dad was more impressed than we had thought he would be. But there was a problem! The bus had a manual transmission – later to be associated with the term – “four on the floor”. Not only had Dad not driven anything this size, he did not know how to drive any vehicle that had a manual transmission, let alone one where the gear shift came out of the floor.
Mom, on the other hand, being the eternal optomist that she is, belayed that fear by stating, “Oh, that is not a problem, my father (Pappy) knows how to drive a bus, he can teach you.” Reluctantly, Dad gave in and a call was placed to the owner asking if it would be possible to have a trial run to see how well the bus handled. We can still remember to this day, Dad’s words to the owner after the test drive – “Well, I would like to buy it, but I can only do so on one condition, you have to deliver it to our house. I do not even know if I am going to be able to drive this thing.” Turning and looking towards us, Dad said “I can’t believe you guys talked me into this.”
A deal was made. Dad purchased the bus and it was delivered to the house. Pappy was only too glad to teach Dad how to operate and drive the bus. Pappy had owned motor homes in the past, driven large trucks, and had been a bus driver for the school district before becoming a maintenance man in the town’s middle school.
Well, after several lessons, Dad began to feel comfortable driving the bus and it was time for us to take our first trip in the camper. Our “Maiden Voyage!” Mom and Dad had planned to take us to a campsite that was only two hours away (close enough to get there before dark yet not that far away should they have to return home in a hurry). It was Mother’s Day weekend and Mom was pregnant (eight months along to be exact). Dad arrived home around five o’clock, we loaded the camper with food and supplies and off we went for a great weekend of camping and fishing. Dad wasn’t too concerned about driving the bus (camper) because Pappy had taught him well and had assured Dad that he was ready to go it alone.
Our first fiasco of the trip occurred when Dad made his first right hand turn onto the highway as we were leaving town. Whoever the last person was to put food into the refrigerator forgot to insert the “pin”. Now this pin is sort of a locking mechanism that keeps the refrigerator closed while the camper is in motion. Well, we learned real quick that the refrigerator opened by itself if the pin was not in. Yup, we had pickles, a carton of orange juice, a whole gallon of milk, and some broken eggs on the floor of the camper before we even got out of town. As soon as the stuff hit the floor, Vicky (short for Lady Victoria), our fun loving schnauzer, was in the middle of the mess trying her best to eat everything in site. Dad pulled off the road so that we could clean up the mess and then off to the fishing camp we went.
Now if you have never driven a “four on the floor” type vehicle (a few training sessions do not a bus driver make), depressing the clutch and shifting gears, while trying to give the darn thing some gas can be a little bit intimidating, especially when attempting to drive uphill. What made it even worse was that time had passed by so quickly we didn’t realize that the sun was already setting. Dad’s attempt to drive the bus uphill, on a very narrow, dark, dirt road was to be the next adventure we were to experience during this, our “Maiden Voyage!”
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