Hail to the bus driver!
All throughout primary school I lived fairly close to the particular institution upon where I received my education. However as I made the transition from primary to high school, I was introduced to the school bus. The days of walking home and getting into mischief were now behind me and had been replaced with boarding a bus and getting into mischief. Along with the introduction of the school bus naturally came the introduction of the school bus driver.
The school bus drivers were like characters in our life. We got to know them. We talked to them. We constantly referenced them. Sure they were grumpy old pricks that yelled at us and told us to shut up. Sure we watched them swear at pedestrians and cyclists from the window. But they were also our heroes.
Today I am going to write about the men who drove my school bus...
Winston
Winston was the school bus driver when I started high school, and was the driver we had the longest. I was instantly fond of this man purely due to his name... Winston. The only other Winston I knew of was Winston Zedmore, and I didn't even really know him. I was just really into the idea that I knew a guy named Winston. Winston was a bloke in his sixties and spoke in a real "rough as guts" kind of way. He kinda sounded like the character Bobo from the fairly lackluster Australian comedy programme "Fat Pizza", always telling everybody to shut up. He referred to all males as "trouble" often using phrases like "shut up, trouble", "good morning, trouble" and "here comes trouble". To me his gruff persona didn't really match up with the fact that he was always neatly dressed, cleanly shaven, and just generally well presented.
One day I was getting the bus somewhere during the school holidays and he was driving. I was waiting to get on and heard him speaking to other people riding the bus, elderly ladies, single mothers and such, and his voice was totally different. When it was my turn to pay my fare he looks me in the eye and says "what are you up to, trouble" in his gruff voice. It was then obvious that Winston was just putting on an act so the unruly teenagers would not get the best of him.
John Parry
John Parry was Winston's back-up driver. When Winston was sick or on holidays we'd get John Parry. John Parry was an old, gaunt looking man who looked to have walked straight out of an anti-smoking ad campaign. He was fairly grumpy and old, but sometimes got a bit silly and would tell dirty jokes. Often he would overhear someone quoting something from the previous nights Simpsons episode and he'd recognise it and get up from his seat and start yelling out to us about how funny it was.
At the beginning of one school year the lists for roll call had not been printed yet, and our PE teacher asked us to write our names down on a sheet of paper that was passed around. In this situation other kids write in obviously fake names like "Homer Simpson" and "Jason Voohrees" but teachers are onto this shit and they never make it onto the rolls. I wrote the name "John Parry" onto the list and completely forgot about it. Later that week in our next PE lesson the teacher was marking the roll and proceeds to call out the name "John Parry!" and laughter erupts from the five or so kids in the room who caught our bus, while everyone else looks on confused as fuck. One kid yells out "Miss, John Parry is a bus driver, he's not meant to be here!" and everyone laughed some more.
Scott
Scott was only our bus driver for a few terms. Scott was aged somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties. He wasn't a particularly hip guy, but he was young enough to be able to talk shit and joke around with the high school aged students, and in comparison to the normal old fogies we got, this was enough to make him almost some sort of teen idol. At the time he was the coolest guy alive, however in retrospect some of his antics were fairly irresponsible and a little bit sleazy.
Scott was always up for a laugh, and would always go along with ideas we came up with. Sometimes it was just making other kids run for the bus in the morning. He'd do that thing where we drove past a bus stop leaving all the kids staring as we slowly went past, stopping up the road a little bit, waiting for them to catch up, and then driving off up the road a bit more and then stopping again, over and over. Sometimes he'd stop at McDonalds on the way home so kids could run in and grab something to eat, most of the time placing an order with one of the students for himself. He would take massive detours to drop people off right at their front door, occasionally even waiting for them to get changed and return to the bus where they would head to a friends house or to work.
At some point Scott started buying alcohol for some of the girls who would have been around sixteen. They started out just asking him, offering him some money to duck in the bottle-o but he would always decline. Then they'd start flirting with him and inviting him to their parties... and you could tell that he was starting to consider it. Then one Friday morning when me and another girl got on the bus he tells her to check up the back. We walked up there and in the space between the back seat and window, he'd stuck a couple of bottles of vodka. And then he did it a few more times.
Malcolm
Malcolm was kind of vacant and didn't say much. Occasionally he'd tell everyone to shut up. He looked a little bit like a monkey the way his lips sat, with his small amount of hair combed over, sitting there hunched over at the wheel.
Our school was in an area that was known for flooding. There were two roads out of the area and once one was under water, it meant that the other was not far behind it and we had to be evacuated. On days when one of the roads was under water, shit would get real hectic with people at the school and local residents rushing about trying to get out of the area. One time it had been raining heavily for days, and we all thought an evacuation was certain. It didn't happen, but the first road had been flooded and closed. At 2:30 when we were leaving, the bus was stuck in traffic on the way out. It gets to the point where the bus should be taking a detour and turning to the right to take the alternative road out, but Malcolm takes a left like we do every day. Everyone is kind of looking at each other asking if we should let him know what's up, but we just wait it out.
Malcolm stops at the causeway, where the road is completely under water. We're thinking that he's obviously going to now turn the bus around and take the other road. But that's not what happened. Maybe he didn't know he was supposed to take another road, maybe he just couldn't be fucked waiting in traffic, I don't know... But he floors it and launches the bus toward the large body of water now that was blocking the road, flowing over it at ridiculous speeds. As soon as we hit the water the bus bounces back and the engine stops. Water starts pouring in the door, quickly covering the floor. The bus starts sliding on the road, slowly rotating. It then starts tipping, and was pretty much up on two wheels. Everybody was standing up on the seats as water was still pouring in. Malcolm is still calmly trying to get the bus started. One might think he'd be giving it a bit of "it'll be okay kids!" but nah, he was chill. Eventually the bus started again, and he somehow managed to slowly get it out of the water. As we drove up the hill all the water rushed toward the back and was deep enough to be covering the seats up there. On the way down the hill it all rushed towards the front emptying out the door. For the whole ride home Malcolm would stop at hills where the front left of the bus was angling down so he could drain the bus some more.
Ian
Ian was the last bus driver we had when I was at school, and he was an absolutely pleasant man. He was bald. He kind of looked like Mr Anderson. He had a perfectly straight, immaculately trimmed strip of hair that wrapped around the back half of his head. When saying goodbye to the guy of an afternoon he would just keep going and going until the person had left and the bus door was closed. "Yep, okay, not a problem, seeya, righty-o, yep, bye, okay, seeya!" over and over again until the person was out of earshot.
If I wanna hear you talk, I'll shove my arm up your ass and work your mouth like a puppet!
Re: Hail to the bus driver!
Wow, when I started reading this I thought "no way were any of his bus drivers as crazy as mine" but they sound on par.
We had this lady, about 45 and obviously became a bus driver after a traumatic change in her life. Perhaps a divorce, perhaps after compulsory alcohol rehab or something else. Either way, she clearly no longer gave a fuck in life.
These are some of the highlights of the route home.
1 - There was a spastic kid called Ashley that was obsessed with the Power Ranges and thought he was a secret agent. He'd always talk into his headphones as if he was slyly radioing back to base. Anyway, when he was getting off the bus the entire bus would chant 'Ashley Ashley' and when he got off he would stand on his front lawn and do some kind of dance manoeuvre or fake kung fu fighting. The bus lady would make sure the bus was stopped so that the full routine could be observed.
2 - Later the bus would travel up a hill and onto a long winding road along a ridge. The kind of road where when it's garbage day the residents have no other option than putting the bin on the actual road, and two cars can rarely pass by each other safely due to bins and parked cars. She would flog the bus around this road and intentionally hit the wheelie bins. Bin day was the happiest day of the week for all involved. I remember one time she hit a bin so sweet that it went up in the air and then landed on the roof of the bus.
3 - The ridge would end in a big roundabout. The bus driver would do loops around the roundabout at a fairly high speed. The amount of loops varied day by day, but I think the record was something like 15 loops.
4 - Soon after the loop we would drive past a Hungry Jacks drive through. The bus driver would get all giddy with excitement and say "WHO WANTS HAPPY JACKS" in a manner akin to the infamous "Have some more sloppy joes" line from Happy Gilmore. Everyone on the bus would find it funny that she actually thought it was called Happy Jacks, and they'd make up their own alternative names. My favourite was Flappy Scraps but there was others like "Hungry Flaps" (reference to vagina). We'd always beg her to drive the bus through the drive through but there was an awning that would have made it impossible. After a while we convinced her to stop so everyone could get ice cream cones.
5 - When it was time to leave the bus, she'd often refuse to stop it, but instead open the door while she was still rolling and you had to jump out. She wasn't completely insane, she'd be going at a low speed, but it was funny seeing the look on the face of the people that didn't think the joke was funny (girls).
Re: Hail to the bus driver!
I hated bus drivers when I was a kid. It was really easy to get a bus pass back then but I couldnt be bothered, and I used to spend my 50cents bus fare on zooper doopers and other shit. My mate Dayne reckoned you'd just say the bus pass is in your bag and run on. The bus driver then looked like Howard Stern/Otto, but he was very angry. I remember after about a week of me not paying he went batshit (well to me anyway), he smashed his fist into the till, change went everywhere and he yelled at me. Over a dollar. After that I got the pass, but used to walk home whenever that cunt was working
Re: Hail to the bus driver!
None of my regular bus drivers were memorable or cool, but there was this bus that wasn't run by the school/council/whoever organised the buses that was very different compared to the other buses. Firstly it was the bus, it was different to the regular buses that were brands like Hino, MAN, or Mercedes. This bus looked like it was straight from an American tv show. It was yellow and had a front-end and bonnet that stuck out in front. I always thought 'that would be a cool bus to take to school'.
Well unfortunately this bus didn't service my area, it went up into the 'bush' around Valdora, North Arm, Yandina and Doonan [Sunshine Coast]. This big yellow bus spluttering along half washed out gravel roads.
The only chance I got to ride this bus was when we went on excursions, because it was privately run it must of been the cheapest [and was definitely the most unsafe bus i've ever been on].
Next came the iconic bus driver: Lujbo Atanasov [forgive me Lujbo i'm unsure how to spell your name correctly. pronounced LOO-BO A-TENA-SOF]. Lujbo was a character. He was a recent migrate to Australia at the time, from The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, never call it just Macedonia, or he would flip his lip over it, though if talking about him he was happy to be called a Macedonian :s.
Lubjo hated that his bus was yellow, and was always breaking down and that most of the kids he drove to school were Jehovah's Witnesses [as he was some sort of Slavic Orthodox Christian]. The bus was income for his family and some money from the bus helped him establish his own martial arts school! I can't remember if it was actually affiliated with any recognised martial art though, pretty sure he just modified moves he had learnt during his army service in his homeland mixed with some 'street style' too. At school we referred to it simply as LUJBO KARATE. So my school and Lujbo came to some sort of an agreement; he would provide bus services and in return we had to do a lesson of Lujbo Karate each week for about a month, as a sort of advertisement for his new business venture hoping kids would go home and tell their parents and ask to sign up for the paid classes.
Well the karate was pretty handy, he showed 12 y.o.s how to disarm someone holding a knife or gun held to their back or throat! Also how to kick someone in the groin and how to flip someone over your shoulder. If you mucked around during the demonstration Lujbo would make you stand in the corner and make you hold a piece of chalk in your mouth/lips like smoking a cigarette. If someone had to do it everyone else cracked up laughing, not because someone had to do it but because of Lujbo's accent. Stand in the corner with chalk in your mouth, sounded more like 'stand in the corner with chalk in your moot! Especially funny when girls had to do it or the one time our gay teacher got in trouble for being a pedant - Lujbo didn't like this.
As more and more kids got injured, the school started to worry about whether it was going to be blamed. Still with a few weeks left 'in the program', one day all of a sudden it was the LUJBO KARATE exam time so that you could have a certificate of completion. I faired well throughout all the weeks and didn't get hurt, until the exam day. My sparring partner Ben flipped me over his shoulder and I landed bad on my foot [i think it only bruised my heel, but was sore for weeks]. I still got a certificate and remember everyone looking out and thinking what the fuck, as Lujbo had signed his name with his surname first followed by his given name. Everyone declared that Lujbo was dumb and that his karate was a joke.
I think Lujbo just went back to being a bus driver. He eventually had enough money to rid his bus of the colour yellow. He painted it white with a thick red 'racing stripe' through the middle. When asked why he painted it these colours, he said because these were the Macedonian nation colours; white for the people and red for all the blood that had been shed. Fair enough, but driving on dirt roads and the bus being a smoke-blowin' diesel soon tarnished his new paint job and soon it looked like it was three stripes; the top off white, middle red and bottom black/brown/grey.
Lujbo's family were weird, but that is another couple of stories.
Re: Hail to the bus driver!
ahahahahahahaha, fucking epic article and comments guys.
We had a busdriver who looked like Phil Jamison and another one that looked like John Howard. Most of our bus trip shenanigans revolved around the 'teds' though, a group of mentally and physically challenged people who had a special home on the bus route. They would get on and cause all kinds of commotion. For ages I wanted to write a comic about them but I eventually realised this couldn't be done in a way that wasn't poor taste, so I gave up on the idea. This is them...
The Head Ted... he was quite normal, I think he just had a mild form of cerebal palsy. He looked a bit like a fit mafia dude and he always had a bumbag on, and if he got on with other Teds he would make them behave by shooting them dirty looks. He also protected the other Teds if people were mean or rude to them... he would get up and challenge able-bodied people to a fight and begin waving his fists in the air, "Come on, pick on me then!" No one ever fought him.
The Maniacs... There were two of these guys. We called them the 'maniacs' because they would always get into a loud, boisterous argument about who was 'the maniac'. "You're the maniac!", "No, YOU'RE the maniac!" Once one of them got onto the bus with a massive silver boombox on his shoulder, and it was blaring that song 'It Must've Been Love'. He started singing along with it, "It must've been love, because it's over now", and then he stopped and pointed to himself and told everyone on the bus, "But it's not over with MY baby".
Hardcore Ted... This one used to have a denim Kiss jacket and always wore Sepultura or Pantera T-shirts. He was big and looked like Huey Hewitson, and he told us he never drank milk because it made him fat.
Gargs... This guy looked just like Gargamel off the Smurfs.
Garg's Dad... This guy looked just like an older version of Gargs.
Garg's Woman... she looked quite normal and was about 18 years old but none of us could work out if she was Gargs' girlfriend or daughter. Some people thought it was both.
Re: Hail to the bus driver!
I only went the bus-route on days it was pissing down, apart from that I always walked.
One driver, his name was Karl (with a K), and he was about 40, morbidly obese, long greasy hair and unkept beard.
Every arvo, without fail, he would have a 3/4 finised 2L bottle of coke wedged between his fat and the rail next to his seat.
If you didn't stand up prior to your stop, he would continue driving.
He kicked me off the bus on my 7th B'day for playing corners on the back seat.
I'm not sure here, but I recall someone mentioning he got busted for being a rock spider.
Re: Hail to the bus driver!
Big lolz at "Miss, John Parry is a bus driver, he's not meant to be here"
I always got the train to school