The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

Your compiler’s uncle, Frank Crawford (1917-2008), and cousin, John Posey Woods (1915-2004), used to regale Brooks folk with adventurous tales of school bus trips to Fayetteville way back in the early 1930s.  Cudn John Posey was the more talkative of the two, and could hear better, as well, so he did most of the talking in these tale-tellings, but Uncle Frank would chime in when he could hear what had been said.

The most memorable story they told involved the weak bladder of the bus driver, William Calhoun “Callie” Padgett (1876-1951), and his need to stop off for a visit to the wood’s edge a couple of times each trip.  One fine morning such a stop transpired, and one of the older and bolder boys jumped into the driver’s seat and took off without Mr. Callie.  They rode around the dirt roads of Fayette County all morning and afternoon, skipping school altogether.

Ferrol A. Sams, Sr. (1892-1979) was county school superintendent back then, and was fit to be tied when the Brooks bus did not show up at the schoolhouse that morning.   He called Sheriff  Ben Adams (1884-1941) and asked him to go have a look.  The sheriff’s department only had the sheriff and one deputy in those days, and both set out in separate patrol cars on a search for the missing bus.   The found Mr. Callie walking alongside a road, but all he could tell the law officers was that the kids had taken off with the bus.  It didn’t turn up till the next morning, when it was found to have been surreptitiously parked in Mr. Callie’s yard overnight, following a fine and care-free day on the part of everyone who had been on the adventure.

The adults were on guard for the next few weeks for a repeat performance, but the kids did not rise to the bait.  They waited till the matter had been more or less forgotten about, and then did it again.   Sheriff Adams was able to find the bus this time in reasonably prompt fashion, and the kids got to school a bit late that day.  Superintendent Sams at that point devised a plan.

Telephones were a rarity back then; the only one in Brooks was in the grocery store owned and operated by W. C. “Buck”  Putman (1888-1954), and the only two in Woolsey were in the store and home of Mortimer G. Sams (1883-1953), the school superintendent’s older brother, who was called “Mort,” which in the local patois of the day was pronounced “Mawt.”   Superintendent Sams got Mr. Callie, Mr. Buck, and Mr. Mawt to agree to a plan: the bus route was changed to run through downtown Woolsey, and Mr. Buck was to call the superintendent every morning at 7:30 if the bus had not passed his store by then.   If it had not turned the corner by Mr. Mawt’s by 7:50, he, too, was to place a call to his brother’s office.   When the band of merry school bus hijackers learned of this plan, further commandeering plots were thwarted.

Twenty years later, in the early 1950s, the bus trips to and from Fayetteville remained incredibly informal.  Longtime Brooks mayor Robert “Bobby” Putman Butler (1933-2016), who was in the FCHS Class of 1952, remembered that the driver, Mr. Jim Massengale (1905-1982), had a habit of stopping every afternoon at the store of Mr. Sam Bailey (1877-1971), which was across the road from present day Millpond Gardens Nursery on what is now a vacant lot, to get a Coke and a pack of cigarettes.  He would say, “Bobby, you drive Mary Ann Peeples home, then swing back by here and pick me up.”  [Mary Ann Peeples (1936-2023) lived with her parents,  Swain Peeples (1912-1976) and Vonor Chapman Peeples (1913-1999) in the big, white plantation house that still stands at the corner of Redwine Road and State Highway 74.] Letting a student drive the bus with other students on it confounds belief by today’s standards of safety, but that was a different time…and a different place, quite frankly.

The only modern bus story your compiler knows is one that’s much more tame than those related above. Your compiler’s two sons were at Brooks Elementary in the very early 2000s, and rode the bus to and from school each day.  One day, the younger son, Hampton, fell asleep on the bus, and the older boy, Niel, got off and let the bus go on its merry way with Hampton still snoozing in one of its seats; the driver had to come back and drop Hampton off a bit later, no doubt after a frantic call to the schoolhouse from your compiler’s wife.

So…the wheels on the bus:  they really do go ‘round and ‘round, don’t they?