Safety, 70's style...
Is it just me or does everyone have very fond memories of the school bus?
John Howard yesterday announced a 40 million dollar campaign to put seatbelts in regional school buses, which is a good idea, a great idea and I hope they do it soon…
However, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my carefree seatbelt-less school bus days. Being buckled up would have seriously cramped my school bus style.
We were on the bus for more than an hour every morning and every afternoon and that meant the kids who caught our bus were a bit like extended family. We might have ignored each other during the day, but you knew more about the kids on your bus than just about anyone. You knew where they lived, whether or not they had a ritzy house, what their mum looked like in her pj’s and usually what they had for breakfast…
On our bus (remember it was the olden days), we had to throw newspapers and bread out the window of the moving vehicle as we passed certain farms. That’s what counted for ‘home delivery’ 70’s style! If Mary Cartenbark (that was our bus driver) remembered, she’d slow the bus down long enough to give the designated ‘chucker’ half a chance of hitting the farm gate, but most of the time we’d all watch transfixed as the rolled up paper hurtled wide and long and straight into a ditch. Then we’d all fall in the aisle of the bus cacking ourselves…
If the up roar was loud enough, poor old Mrs Cartenbark would back up the bus and order us all into the bush to retrieve the far flung missile, but most of the time she just shook her head in the rear view mirror and kept on trucking.
After years on the bus we knew the road like the back of our hand…ever bump, every bend, every chance for Mrs Cartenbark to get up a little speed going down a hill, then into a dip and up in the air we’d go!!!
The older you got, the further down the back of the bus you got to sit, and the better your chance of ‘getting air’ when Mary hit the dip at the bottom of Carters’ Road.
Not safe….I know…. But just a little bit fun.
John Howard yesterday announced a 40 million dollar campaign to put seatbelts in regional school buses, which is a good idea, a great idea and I hope they do it soon…
However, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my carefree seatbelt-less school bus days. Being buckled up would have seriously cramped my school bus style.
We were on the bus for more than an hour every morning and every afternoon and that meant the kids who caught our bus were a bit like extended family. We might have ignored each other during the day, but you knew more about the kids on your bus than just about anyone. You knew where they lived, whether or not they had a ritzy house, what their mum looked like in her pj’s and usually what they had for breakfast…
On our bus (remember it was the olden days), we had to throw newspapers and bread out the window of the moving vehicle as we passed certain farms. That’s what counted for ‘home delivery’ 70’s style! If Mary Cartenbark (that was our bus driver) remembered, she’d slow the bus down long enough to give the designated ‘chucker’ half a chance of hitting the farm gate, but most of the time we’d all watch transfixed as the rolled up paper hurtled wide and long and straight into a ditch. Then we’d all fall in the aisle of the bus cacking ourselves…
If the up roar was loud enough, poor old Mrs Cartenbark would back up the bus and order us all into the bush to retrieve the far flung missile, but most of the time she just shook her head in the rear view mirror and kept on trucking.
After years on the bus we knew the road like the back of our hand…ever bump, every bend, every chance for Mrs Cartenbark to get up a little speed going down a hill, then into a dip and up in the air we’d go!!!
The older you got, the further down the back of the bus you got to sit, and the better your chance of ‘getting air’ when Mary hit the dip at the bottom of Carters’ Road.
Not safe….I know…. But just a little bit fun.
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