| School Bus Ride....... By: Fred Foster This story was told at the Rural Hall High School Reunion on May 18, 2007. It ' s wrote just as he told it. Well, you all remember the school bus ride....... Back then towards the end of school, the senior class normally would take a field trip or do something unusual or something. We had a trip planned to go to Raleigh, I believe, or I'm , not sure, but anyway at the last minute they cancelled it. We got a little bit upset about that. Well thats just the end of it period. I don't know how, why or whatever, I wasn't the type of guy to get into trouble. I drove a school bus my senior year. That's a long story also, but I won't go into that. I got my driver's license on my sixteenth birthday in November. I had never driven in my life, Daddy wouldn't let me drive his car. So I drove up and down the driveway on a tractor. I got my license on a Thursday. Monday morning I started driving a school bus. There were forty seven kids, well thats a pretty ridiculous story in itself, . But anyway our school bus trip, we talked some of us among ourselves, and we decided that we ought to do something so that our class at Rural Hall would be remembered, the class of 1943. So, I came up with an idea of lets all of us go to town. Meaning town, I mean Winston Salem. That was a pretty good little trip back then. Well, nobody had any automobiles, or other transportation so how was we going? I told them not to worry about that, I would take care of that. We decided to meet at Ledford's drug store. Now time wise, I made my routes that morning, got all the kids to school. Instead of going to park the bus I drove around the block and came out at Ledford's drug store. About half of the class was there I think. We all got on and took off down old 52, well there was only 52 at that time. We went on into Winston Salem, downtown. I parked oddly enough, right in front of the county jail. That was the only place that I knew you could park the school bus in downtown Winston Salem. Anyway, I said the first thing we ought to do is go down the hill here and take a tour of Reynolds Tobacco,cause they would give us all a pack of cigarettes. So we did that, got our cigarettes, and we sorta split up, go do your thing, but this bus is gonna leave here at 2:00 cause I got to take all the kids back home. Well, fortunately, everybody was back, and we came on back to the schoolhouse. Coming up old 52 you make a right turn. When I made that right turn, there were red lights a flashing all over the place. I thought what in the world, must be a fire or something. This was before the blue lights, they was all red back then. Well, I pulled up in front of the school, and didn't hardly get, well the door flung open, and I hadn't even touched it. Guy Cain came and two or three patrolmen grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, I was in the office and my feet hadn't even touched the ground. But anyway we had a good time on that trip. They talked to me and tried to figure out what they was gonna do. I was just sitting there shaking and trembling thing what in the world is happening. Guy Cain was also a preacher at our church. He came down to my house that night. He and Moma and Daddy had a prayer meeting. I was upstairs studying. It was only about a week before school was out, so I had no business being down there. Well, Moma and Daddy were real active in the church, had big leadership rolls, well, they sided with everything Guy Cain had to say. It was me against all of em'. Anyway, I didn't drive the bus anymore for the rest of the year. I think Guy Cain drove it himself. They decided, well he did, well for a while they thought I shouldn't be allowed to graduate, well, now that was getting serious, sure enough. Well, he called me in and told me he wanted me to write an essay, he told me how many pages, as to why you did this. Well, just for the fun of it, was all i had to say. But anyway, i wrote a story, and of course I embellished it in a lot of ways, said that the highlight of the trip was going through Reynolds Tobacco Co. The reason for that was all these school kids live on the farm, and raise tobacco. All they know about the tobacco is picking it, take it to the warehouse and sell it, thats it. They do not know how that tobacco became a cigarette. I thought it was really my responsibility to show them. I wrote several pages about that and turned it in. The nest day, he called me in again. He told me that was a mighty good story you wrote. He said he had never thought about that. I told him I was glad he enjoyed it. Anyway, it smoothed out and that was about the end of the line. Thats the school bus story...... |
