Buses have personalities. Every school bus compound is filled with a variety of buses built over a decade or two. School buses are always assigned numbers. That seems a shame to me. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if the buses had names? The middle school bus with all its unruly seventh and eighth graders could be The Beast. One of the buses that make the long run to Rocky Ridge would be Geronimo. The bus with the sweet, little kindergarten kids might be Serenity. The daily bus ride could be more meaningful if each bus had a name. I think Tennessee Williams understood this when he wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire.” But of course we are dealing with the public school system—“public” being the operative word. You mix creativity with “public” and you are going to have trouble. Someone is going to suggest we burn “Huckleberry Finn” for being racist, or destroy Michelangelo’s “David” for being obscene. No, we give our buses plain, inoffensive numbers.

In our district the bus numbers represent the model year. Thus, 097 is a 1997 model and 014 is the 2014 model. If two buses were purchased the same year you might have 011 and 011A. You might think that bus drivers would jump at the newest bus. They don’t. They tend to stick with the bus they trust. The driver of 006 has been driving twenty-two years. With her seniority she could take the new bus when it comes in. But the new bus is unproven whereas 006 has never let her down badly enough to be fired. She forgoes the heated seat and exhaust brake to stick with her partner—006.

The other morning it was 22 below zero. The temperature was in the 40’s the day before. We were all caught off-guard. In-spite of engine block heaters and anti-gel additive in the diesel some of the buses wouldn’t start. Pneumatic doors wouldn’t open or close. One windshield defroster couldn’t keep up with the moisture emitted by seventy breathing kids. The bus driver had to stop because she couldn’t see.

I was called at the last moment by a driver whose bus wouldn’t start. This was her backup bus. Her regular bus’s transmission went out the day before. She keeps her bus at her home, fifteen miles from the compound. She couldn’t get to another bus in time. I ran out to 001 and started my bus. It struggled desperately before dieseling properly. The cloud of half-burnt diesel that engulfed my house could have gotten me a citation from the EPA. When I finally put it in gear and gave it a little throttle the bus wouldn’t move. I checked the park-break, but it was already disengaged. I gave it a little more throttle, there was a crack and the bus started rolling. The heat pump was on, but it would be twenty minutes before it produced any heat. A frosty windshield and thick ground fog—the kind with a blue sky above—shrouded my way. I had to drive slowly. It was so cold that kids who had been waiting on time at their stops had run back to their homes. I stopped at one rural home to see if the kids would come out. Sure enough the door opened and two faces peeked out. A brother and sister came running up their long driveway (more of a country road).

“Where were you? My hair froze solid!” the sister tells me.

I apologized.

Two other boys came running out of their home when they saw me. They were a block from the official bus stop, but I stopped anyway.

“We waited,” they told me, apologetically, “but we went back home.” I felt bad for being late. The other kids normally at that stop weren’t there. I didn’t blame them.

There was loads of chatter on the radio. Arrangements were being made for drivers to pick up another driver’s kids.

“014, after dropping off your kids at the elementary can you go back out 012’s kids on the highway?”

“I’m at Bursten’s Road. I think I’m closer,” says 002.

Complaints about non-functioning doors were coming in. Suggestions were being given on how to defrost the windshield. Another driver whose route overlapped mine called to ask me where I was. She told me she would tell the frozen kids I was coming. I turned a corner and there was a large group huddled together. Their breath rose into the sky as if from a smokestack. There were several running vehicles sitting there with slightly warmer kids inside. I opened the door and the kids started filing in. Wouldn’t you know it, they were smiling. At least the elementary students were. The teenagers—not so much.

“Cold, cold, cold,” exclaimed one girl as she passed. She wasn’t even three-feet tall yet. Her cheeks and nose were red. Her blue eyes peeked out from under a penguin hat. Fuzzy tassels ran down each side of her face.

My door still wasn’t closing all the way. I asked a little fellow in the front seat if he would step down and push on it for me. He happily complied. The door shut and the stairway light went out.

“At each  stop I have to push on the door, okay?” He felt important.

We came around the corner and I saw 008 sitting in front of the fire department. It was the bus that had broken down there the night before. The tow truck hadn’t come to get it yet. All the windows were frosted over. It looked lonely and out of place. I could almost sense its sadness as all of the kids that would normally ride it passed by on 001.

“Don’t worry,” I tell it silently as I steer 001 out of town. “You’ll get better and they’ll be back.”