First Installment - The Bus Years

The bus years. Ah yes, fond memories. At the time we wondered. At the time we might not have appreciated. At the time….we had no idea what impact it would have on the rest of our lives. Yes, the bus years.


In 1996, Dad and Mom bought an old tour bus to replace the 1970 something motor home we had been using to tow our baskets to craft shows for years. Truth be told, the back end of the motor home was about to crack off from the extra weight of the weathervanes we had begun to sell; thus the need for a big rig.


The bus was a 1979 101 Eagle. It was better than all the other buses cause it had torsion suspension…and it looked cool. A vision in white. Dad searched around until he found this one from Texas. It has been used to cart desperate people back and forth from the casinos in Biloxi, MS. There were 48 seats, two by two all the way down the bus to the back. And of course there was the bathroom.


The man delivered our bus to the airport in Little Rock. His flight left within minutes of his arrival. He showed dad where the on switch was, where the break was, where the fuel tank was, and waved good-bye. We were all so proud. It was so big. We were going somewhere, quite literally. No more stopping to have your ‘knickers’ welded back on. Just open roads.


Dad hopped in the driver seat and away we went. Mom and we girls road in the blue Chevy behind him, amazed how he could just pop in and drive a 40 foot bus. Not 10 miles out of Little Rock, a puff of black smoke went up from the back of the bus. It started slowing down and finally pulled off the road. Plan b. Some ‘driver thingy’ had blown and we had to leave it sitting all by its lonely self by the side of the road until new parts arrived.


Eventually we made it home with the bus. Dad ripped all the seats out except for the first two sets. He added a sink and a two burner stove top next to the bathroom. The water tank was a large RubberMaid storage container with a pump attached at the bottom and a hose that led to the faucet. The drain under the sink ended with a cut off pipe and a five-gallon bucket. One side of the overhead shelves were taken out. The other side was portioned off into ‘bathroom’, ‘bedroom’, ‘kitchen’, and ‘miscellaneous’ areas. Each of us received a giant oval basket minus the handle to be placed in the bedroom area of the shelf. That was our ‘drawer’. A bar was installed to hang our clothing on. We threw in a table, some folding chairs, an ice chest, a mattress for good measure, some Candy Land carpet and we were ready to roll.



To be continued...