As my thoughts wandered between past and present, I kept watch for the bus. Jim Kasuk, an older kid from the neighborhood who had graduated from Mount St. Mary's High School, told me that there was no mistaking the MSM bus. "It's huge, it has one of those big noses on it like the old time buses. It's two-toned — brown and white made up from parts of all kinds of different buses that Brother Earnest got from junkyards. It's the ugliest bus on the road; the Frankenstein of buses. You can't miss it!" Jim had explained.
As I waited for the bus by myself, little did I know there were groups of kids up and down the avenue awaiting the same fate. We were like streetlights at uneven intervals. Later in the year, we would start to come together, to pull in the strings of lights tighter making larger clumps of kids and fewer stops for the rolling monster.
After what seemed like a hundred standard yellow school buses passed, a Brown and White “blimp” could be seen down the street. It was enormous, round and cartoon-like as it sailed towards me. I gave the driver the "a panic wave" using both arms in rapid motion to insure that the ship would stop to "swallow me up". Once the bus stopped, a wide mechanical door swung open and I hopped up the huge stairs whipping out my new bus pass in one slick move.
As I looked up from the stairs to the driver, I blinked in amazement. Did Santa Claus have a second job as a bus driver? There in front of me, the captain of the MSM Brown and White was a little old man who was a mix of pirate and cherub.
"Well son, don't juss stan dere, take a seat." He said. "My name's Willie."
As I walked a few rows back, I looked over this small chubby man dressed in Maytag repairman baggy grey pants and matching shirt. He had a wide almost toothless smile and a kindly grandfather’s face with a hint of mischief. What little hair I could see from around his grey cap was pure white. The lines around his mouth and eyes suggested someone who smiled and laughed a good measure. I did not know it at the time, but I had just met one of the great Mount Saint Mary characters whom I would remember for the rest of my life.
I could not help but notice that towards the back of the bus there was a tough group of older boys staring at me as I came in. "Marking" the new recruits, I thought. I could sense that underclassmen were not welcome past the middle of the bus. I took a seat about three rows back from the bus driver.
A few blocks into the trip as we came upon 107th street, a short little chubby kid hopped onto the bus who actually looked more scared than myself and sat right next to me. He was about five feet tall, bespectacled, and roundly shaped. In his hand was a sweet roll the size of a Frisbee. He was a little Irishman, named Hannigan. We would later call him "Hannie"; the upper classmen called him butterball that freshman year. Hanni would turn out to be one of the best guys in the school and a good friend to me and many others.
Copyright Sporting Chance Press
This story is taken from The Brown and White.
