Wade and I both started school while living at the little house. Wade started in 1944, and I started in 1948. I will tell more about the school experience when I get to that topic. In this essay, I want to focus on the school bus. The school bus that picked us up travelled dusty roads all over the west end of Macon County to pick up rural white kids. There were three buses that served the Shorter public school, and they were “named” for the communities where their odysseys began. There was the Chesson bus and the Hardaway bus in addition to our own Milstead bus.
The Milstead bus came down the two lane drive all the way from “the big road” to the little house to pick us up. It turned around in the front yard of the little house, and that’s where we got on. There was a big mudhole in the road about fifty yards in front of the little house, and I remember at least one time that the bus got stuck. By then, Daddy and Uncle Earl had bought a Super A Farmall Tractor. It was small. Some of the boys on the bus didn’t think it would pull the bus out! It was a proud moment for Wade and me when the little tractor pulled the bus right out! Getting on that bus for the first time probably began the most important journey of my life! Looking back, I realize that the Macon County Board of Education and the Shorter public school were doing mission work into abject poverty, although all I knew at the time was that I was starting to school, and I didn’t much like it.
Mr. Mortie Pierce drove the Milstead bus. His wife, Mrs. Rossie Pierce taught first and second grades. The other two bus drivers, Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Johnson, both worked in the cafeteria–the only two lunchroom employees. Mrs. Pierce drove their car to school, and Mr. Mortie could go home in it, and then return in the afternoon to drive the bus, and she could go home in the car. Mr Mortie and Ms. Rossie lived in the Milstead community, which was where the Little House was located. Our address was Rt. 1, Box 45, Milstead, Ala., but the “mail man” knew everybody and where they lived, so a lot of mail just came RFD Milstead. Unlike the school bus the mail was delivered to a box on “the big road” and someone had to walk a half mile to get it. But that is another story. As I have mentioned elsewhere, Daddy had been a bus driver, and had furnished his own bus. That’s how he met Mama. She was a student and had recently moved to Macon County from Shades Mountain, near Birmingham, in Jefferson County. But Daddy’s bus had been disassembled, and the “bus body” as we called it, had become a place to raise chickens. By the time we started to school, the county Board of Education furnished the bus, and Mr. Mortie drove the backroads, whistling “Little Rosewood Casket” or “Uncloudy Day,” picking up kids.
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