There are days when an old familiar song runs through a person’s head, even though the location in the lyrics is far from the path around the Falls. Such was the case Thursday. The song was “Last Train to Clarksville,” sung by The Monkees and released in August 1966, the month this observer entered college.
The pop music culture was big with people of that age, and this particular song took off right from the start. For many young adults at that time, a great summer activity was to tune radios to music stations and drive with the windows down and the volume turned up.
There were no windows down Thursday morning as my early arrival at the bus garage continued the tradition of riding a bus on the last morning of classes for the school year. Typically the process has been to let the transportation department supervisor select who would have this observer riding shotgun.
This time it was a little different. I wanted to take one of the longest and more southern routes with a real pro driver. The choice was obvious; Tom Malcomson has had a route in that area for years. In fact, 45 years. He is our most veteran driver and will retire at the end of the school year.
This was a great bus ride, and unlike any other ride with one of our bus drivers, it was an opportunity to compare notes from an end-of-career perspective. I had ridden with him a time or two before, but it had been a while. He was quick to point out the things that were different since the last time I had ridden with him. We noted the new houses, road improvements, what it was like to ride down Geano Beach Road when a strong northeastern flooded the road many years ago.
He noted that during his career he had driven over a million miles. He said he went through the railroad crossing procedure for an examiner in a recent driving test. The examiner complimented his smooth procedure and asked how many times he had done that. His response, “Over 10,000.”
We talked about some of the homes as we passed them, and he commented about the students who used to live at each residence but now had adult lives somewhere else.
As students climbed aboard at each stop, he almost always greeted them by name. It was easy to see that there was mutual respect built up over the years.
It’s been at least 15 years that the routes on the southern part of the district have transfer points because of the students getting off a bus with K-12 student and heading to Abrams Elementary. Tom had one of these, and the students easily moved from one bus to another. We talked about the fact that it is usually the parents who have much more anxiety about the process than the students.
As often is the case, the last day of school included a bit of parent picture-taking and at least one younger child at a bus stop who wanted to climb aboard the bus. Unfortunately, the youngster had a year or two wait before that could happen.
I asked Tom how many different buses he had over the years, but he had lost count. That can happen over a span of 45 years of driving. He noted that he really appreciated the diesel buses that had a much longer driving range before they had to be refueled. One thing he did not appreciate was the air-operated passenger door that could be a little cantankerous in cold weather. “Manual door controls always worked,” he said, noting an appreciation for simpler things in life.
As we returned to the bus garage after dropping off students at three different locations, I thanked him for sharing the ride. We wished each other well in the next phase of our careers. I left knowing that it might not have been the last train to Clarksville, but it was the last bus ride to Little Suamico and perhaps the last school bus ride this observer would ever experience.
I also left with a reconfirmed understanding that bus drivers set the tone for each school day, whether it was the first day of the school year or the last of a career. No one can ever underestimate the role they play in the education business.
