Bear Grease - Ep. 305: This Country Life - Riding the School Bus

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Get your hair slicked down and your shoes tied, it's time to catch the school bus with Brent! This week will bring back memories to a lot of you who rode the big yellow bus and give insight into what all went on within the confines of that mobile circus. Brent's telling stories that involve his brother Tim and we guarantee you won't want to miss them. Get your books and let's go! It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.

Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share.

Riding the school button. riding the school bus was both a pleasure and a pain, a service provided by the school district to allow every kid the opportunity to get an education. Some of the best lessons learned happened right there while the wheels go round and round. I'm going to tell you all about some of them, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. My brother Tim was almost 17 when the school superintendent tapped him on the shoulder in the lunchroom and told him to come to his office. Tim being a highly decorated veteran of shenanigans and buffoonery

assumed the worst and followed Mr. Targerton to the office. Unsure as to what he'd been caught at, he said he kept his mouth shut, he didn't say a word, and would just wait until he knew what he'd been accused of before he started his defense or accepted his fate. He didn't want to fess up to something that they didn't know about yet. That was a rookie mistake,

and a rookie, he wasn't. Tim, I want you to drive a school bus for me. Can you do that? Tim was a little surprised. He said, well, I can drive it, but I have football practice. Superintendent said, well, it won't be every day just when I need a substitute. I'll talk to Coach Johnson. It'll be fine if you want to do it.

I'll pay it just like I pay everyone else that drives one. Yes, sir, I'll do it. Tim said he had no idea why he picked him out of the cafeteria that was filled with students, but picked him he did, and now he had a job that would put cash in his pocket. Tim Reeves, 16-year-old Warren School District substitute bus driver. Times were different in 1974. Tim's certification consisted of a driving test that started at the bus lot located on the north end of what was then actually filled, where the mighty lumberjack squared up against anyone brave enough to show up on Friday nights in the fall of the year.

Just across the fence from the north end zone that separated the football field was the bus lot. At the corner of Seminary and Bryant Street, it's still there today. On the appointed day, Tim met Arkansas State Trooper Jody Roper. He was there for his test that consisted of him driving out of the bus lot and making one particularly difficult turn at the intersection, a short distance from the lot. Once completed, he gave up his seat to other would-be substitute drivers who were all adults. And they performed the same task. That was it.

That was the test. Trooper Roper signed off on Tim's license and made it official. Times were different in 1974. Tim showed up at the bus lot one afternoon for one of his first assignments after learning that he was needed to fill in for a driver who'd gone home sick. When he got there, the bus supervisor assigned him to a bus that he'd never driven before, on a route he'd never driven before, and told him before he left that, remember, the gas pedal had a tendency to stick in the down position.

He followed that up with grab a young man that lives the furthest from school, and they'll tell you where to turn, where to go, and you'll make all your stops. I'll wait for you here. I'll see you back about five. Five p.m. may sound like pretty late, but you've got to remember how rural southeast Arkansas is and even more so was then. There were a lot of kids to take home

and they were stretched miles from town all over the county. Tim picked a kid up out of the group who said he knew all the stops at the first school he went to. He agreed to be his guide and would pass off the duty to another kid he pointed

out to Tim who would help him finish the few stops that would remain on his route once he got off the bus across the river. Tim's route from school to school across town was like clockwork. All the kids piling on and grabbing a seat. His guide giving him updates as he made his stops when the kids started getting off through the edge of town down narrow streets in obscure neighborhoods, a guy telling him three will get off at the next stop, and they did. Two will get off here. and they did. Keep going, you don't have to stop at this one. They ain't on the bus.

He said it was like having the first GPS. The kid remembered everything. He said he was right on time and almost done with the town portion of the route. And there were about 20 kids on the bus with one stop left to make before leaving the city limits. His guide said three will get off at the next stop, but they won't get off until you turn right on that side street. then you can back up and turn around and we'll head out of town. Tim said he was knee-deep in third gear, leaving that last stop headed for the next one

when he took his right foot off the gas, only to realize it had stayed on the floor. It wasn't like he was painting the road red blazing down the street, but he could see the intersection where he needed to stop and turn for his next stop and the fear in the eyes of the three kids who were seated across from him who were supposed to get off at the spot, they were approaching with ever-increasing velocity. Now, in hindsight, Tim said all I had to do was mashing the clutch and turn on my flashers,

stop, reached down, and pull the pedal free, and go on. But that's not what I did. He said in the heat of the moment he could see there was no oncoming traffic in front or following behind, so he bent over, grabbed the pedal. And with all the street, strength he could muster he pulled it free from its locked position. It took longer than he'd anticipated. When he sat upright, he saw that while he'd done an excellent job of staying properly aligned in the street, he was a lot closer to that stop sign and

turn that he needed to make for his final stop in town. He said it was actually a thing of beauty how he whipped that thing so sharply onto the side street, maneuvering that bus like a seasoned veteran stunt driver and stopping at the exact place. his guide had told him to aim for. The only negative was the physics experiment, the remaining kids were all unwitting participants of that rattled them around like beans in a coffee can. School books and youngans were scattered all around inside the bust. Nobody was crying.

And a quick look in the mirror had everyone up and moving around gathering up books in each other. No one said anything. He said it was rather proud of how he'd handle. the situation even though it had scared him pretty good. He was lost in thought staring straight down the side street in front of him, patting himself on the back and very thankful nothing worse had happened. Now he had to back up and would need his guide to help him watch for cars.

He still had an hour or so driving left to deliver the country kids, the biggest portion of his route home. He looked up in the mirror and he was the only one left on the bus. He looked across and down the street and the dozen or so kids that were left took the opportunity to get off the bus right there. Even his guide had abandoned him. He said, I don't know how they all got home that day. All I know is they didn't ride with me. And according to my brother Tim, that's just how that happened.

On blood trails, the stories don't end when the huntians. is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. But he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold cases.

files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Riding the school bus for me was an 11-year pilgrimage to and from school with my friends and some of my enemies. Why only 11 years and not 12? Because I worked like a man-possessed during the summertime hauling hay, and every Saturday that I wasn't hunting, I was at the local sail barn pushing cows and other livestock through the sale. all winter I was trapping and selling fur, and I saved my money to buy a truck that would deliver me back and forth to school and away from that bus-sized germ-filled petri dish of pandemonium. Every day was a battle between the forces of good and evil, and depending on what grade you were in, the amount of joy or pain you endured from the time you stepped on until you either walked off triumphantly or jumped off in fear for your life.

Since 1892, when the first school car was built up in Indiana, parents have been entrusted the welfare of their tax deductions to complete strangers who only had to possess a good enough sense of direction to find their driveway in the schoolhouse twice a day. The school car, which was a wooden wagon with benches that the young and sat in while staring at the exhaust pipe of a horse, ferried the little Hoosiers to and from school one, step at a time. I bet that made for an early morning and a long afternoon. It reminds me of being in a summertime kindergarten-like program in Risen, Arkansas, and riding the bus home after a long

and arduous day of learning my numbers and letters. Learning how to share a space with folks I only just met, and the grace and how to conduct yourself when your classmates are losing teeth, left and right, and accidentally pooping their breeches at recess. That can tire a young and out to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. We lived several miles out of town into a five-year-old human, a bus seat substituted nicely for a bed on a 30-minute commute. We were the last stop on the route at that location where we lived in, so there was plenty of time to catch a few Zs before we got there.

Every day, Mr. Michael Lemons, a teacher and our bus driver, had to get up and find the seed I was snoozing in and wake me up to get off the bus. Now that was in 1971. Advancing ahead a couple of years and in the fall during the regular school year, my brother Tim and the rest of us waited at the end of the driveway for the school bus, just like we did every other day. With one exception, Tim was holding a shotgun, and wearing a shell vest he'd hidden in the cupboard at the end.

end of our drive the night before. That's right. I said, shell vest and shotgun. The bus pulled up as if nothing was out of the ordinary because really, it wasn't. Tim and his friend, Rusty Ramick, who lived back toward town,

had conspired to go duck hunting instead of school. An elaborate scheme that hinged on one thing. Mr. Lemons buying Tim's story he'd been rehearsing all morning long. The bus slowed to a stop and the doors opened up to Tim reciting his lines to perfection. Mr. Liman's mama said my grades were so good that I could skip school today and go duck hunting with Rusty. Can you let me off at his house? Mr. Lemmas looked at Tim.

He never changed his expression and he said, Tim, is your shotgun loaded? No, sir. All right. Sit here behind me. So, me? our middle brother Chuck and heavily armed Tim filed onto the bus taking our regular seats and Tim sliding into his spot behind the driver's seat grinning like a possum chewing on a wire brush. A few miles later he stepped off the bus at Rusty's house and into the school skipping

Hall of Fame. Two 14-year-old boys had just hacked the school system into being their accomplice for a day of duck under on the Saline River. No one ever squealed and mama never found out. What happened on the bus? Stayed on the bus. But riding the bus was a privilege, not a right. There was a decorum to be followed in penalties for when you didn't. My buddy Michael Roseman and his sister Stephanie,

the dynamic duo behind the sunspot hunting lights, told me once they were riding the bus when a fight broke out in the back. The bus driver was famous for hollering at the kids to, get your head back in the window. But the fight was started by a bully who terrorized everyone on the bus for so long that finally someone had taken a stand. The bully started losing, not only the fight, but his reign of fear over the rest of the students when miraculously the emergency exit door opened when the bus stopped at a stop sign

and the bully fell or was pushed out onto the street. Seeing everything from the driver's seat in the big mirror that tells all, the bus driver drove away, leaving the bully standing there defeated and no other recourse but to walk the rest of the way home. Bullies usually get their due. If they run a foul long enough, it is the course of justice and the way of the bus.

I remember another time we'd moved from rising and started going to school and warn. It was Tim's junior year, and I was eight. We were riding the bus number five, driven by one of the best men I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Mr. Moses Williams, known to everyone as Mr. Moes. He went to work in the school districts of Bradley County, Arkansas as a bus driver and mechanic in 1948. And for the next 57 years, Mr. Moes piloted a yellow school bus retiring in 2005, after driving what I estimate to be to the moon and back several times over,

and not once having an accident, not once. He wore navy blue dickies, work pants in a matching shirt, and took neatly inside his pants. They were always ironed and always clean. A faded red shop rag hung from his back pocket ready when needed. The time of year dictated whether his shirts were long or short sleeve. A black leather belt polished black leather shoes and a brown cap with small red and yellow stripes that followed the seams of where the panels were sewn together. It was what he wore every day.

He smelled of aftershave with a hen of diesel and lava soap. Sitting next to him made me feel like a king. I sat beside him both days on the flat spot of the console that housed all the rocker switches for the bus number five that controlled. trolled the lights beside the driver's side window. That was not a seat. Not by any means was it intended for a child to sit on. But what it was was a place of honor for the boys that acted good and were respectful with the actions and manners.

Now was a lot of things. Young and mischievous and somewhat feral at times, but at no time was I ever disrespectful, especially to Mr. Moes. There were others, however, who were. We're going to call him Billy. And Billy was a year younger than Tim, but several grades behind him. Billy was a veteran bus rider of Mr. Moses' bus.

We were more or less the new kids, and while I had earned somewhat of a lofty position getting a set next to Mr. Moshe and turn on and off the bus lights, Tim and Chuck sat close to the back, which seemed to be universally where the older and the cool kids set. Junior high and elementary students filled the gaps in between the high schoolers and the front of the bus where I concentrated on when I was going to get to light up the blinking lights at the next stop. I wasn't concerned with what happened behind me. Mr. Mose was. I can see him now, a small-framed, lean man. You can see the muscles and the veins in his arms as he manhandled a school bus down the road with no more power steering than a stick horse. Driving to

down the road and watching oncoming traffic while glancing in the mirror that revealed what buffoonery Billy was up to, which was usually picking on someone smaller than him. Mr. Mose was famous for saying, y'all tighten up back there. Tighten up now. It was as animated as he got, but he didn't have to raise his voice much. It worked on the rest of us like your grandpa getting on to you. Nobody wanted Mr. Mose upset with him, except Billy. He didn't kill. care. You can see the frustration to Mr. Moses' face anytime he had to get on to anyone. Why can't you just ride the bus and be good to your neighbor like Mr. Moes? He was the standard for which manners could have been taught. We all followed his lead,

except Billy. He didn't care. The day of the incident started out as any other. We'd all been on the bus for several stops on the way to school that morning when on one of the last stops before kids started getting dropped off at their appropriate school, Billy got on with the rest of the kids at his spot. The bullying began immediately. Before Billy had gotten into his seat, he was picking on a smaller kid who was a regular target of Billy's and no doubt dreaded the next few minutes of terror before he could escape the confines of the bus number five in Billy's hour. Mr. Moses had apparently anticipated what was coming on because he'd already sitting out one y'all tightened up back there before billy had sat down with no more lights to turn

off since the next stop was for me to get off the bus i look back and i watched billy as he antagonized a kid who was in my grade thumping him on the head and taking his books away from him billy laughing his unkept greasy hair swaying back and forth as he laughed his evil tormenting laugh like a mad scientists while my classmate coward in the seat in the fetal position. And I saw my brother Tim stand up. I soon Mr. Mose saw it too. Tim had a hardbacked textbook in his right hand and in two steps he was standing beside Billy. The rest played out like a dream.

Tim cocked that book back like it was a cold peacemaker. Billy turned to look at him, still laughing at the little kid he was terrorizing who'd now slumped down in the floor in the litter and goo that seems to be the standard for every bus I've ever ridden on. With lightning, precision and speed, Tim slapped Billy into the next zip code with that book. The explosion of the blow plastered that greasy hair to the left side of his head and the right side stuck straight out like he combed it with a firecracker. There was an immediate silence on the bus. The echo of that blow resounding through the crowd. Tim reached and grabbed Billy by the shirt collar and he pulled him close,

speaking to him where only Billy could hear what he was saying. All the while, Billy rubbed the left side of his face that was now red as a barn door and imprinted with the thread pattern of that schoolbook. Billy listened to him intently. Tim shoved him down in his seat when he finished talking and walked back and sat down where he'd been. Mr. Mose let out one more complimentary. y'all tighten up back there never said another word neither did billy as far as the reeves boys and billy go it would be 20 years later before he got another tune-up i decided billy needed to go to jail one

night for a warrant that had been issued for him and i happened upon him during a traffic stop billy decided he would not go well we settled at the old bus number five way he got tightened up and he went. None of my kids have ever regularly ridden a bus to school. Field trips and sporting events have been their only exposure. And I feel like they've been somewhat cheated. A school bus is a great place for kids to learn life lessons just like Mr. Moes taught us.

Good actions are rewarded in the lesson Tim taught Billy. Bad actions have repercussions. Then there's all the other lessons you learn on their, Like how you might wind up sitting with someone that you don't know or for one reason or another you may not like. Because it's the only open seat left. You're forced to coexist for a period of time someplace you'd rather not be. But in the end, your suffering or momentary discomfort didn't keep you from where you were going, which was your purpose of being there to begin with.

As adults, we have to do that in our everyday lives, except we substitute the school. bus, our life goals and the struggles we endure to reach him. Now that's a great lesson and one that you're never too young to learn. Thank y'all so much for listening to This Country Life, Bear Grease, and the Render. There's a lot of great content available from Meat Eaters, Jason and Dirk do some good stuff on their calling over at the cutting the distance, and Tony Peterson has some good stuff coming out on his Foundation show. I'll check them out when you get a chance.

Until next week, this is Brent Reeve. Signing all. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts.

Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldware gear at firstlight.com.