Tag Archives: school bus news

Ellen’s Ride – the Song, the Book, the Inspiration

Artwork by Darrin Kobetich

I’d like to introduce you to Ellen, the young lady who inspired my song and subsequent book, Ellen’s Ride.

Many years ago, I fired up my bus for the first day of school. I picked up just one child that day, a little girl named Ellen, who was waiting for the bus to take her to her first day of Kindergarten. I made all the stops on my list, but there were no other children. For the next three years, Ellen was my only morning passenger for that school. We had fun on our trip to school. We used our imaginations to enhance the route. Every street had a magical name or story or mythical creature. No matter how silly and outlandish my ideas were, Ellen rolled with them and added her own magic.

Ellen waits for the bus on her first day of kindergarten

Here’s an example of a typical conversation on our ride to school.

Me: “Where do you want to go today, Ellen?”

Ellen: “Mt. Everest!”

Me: “Mt. Everest is cold this time of year and the air is thin. Make sure you have your oxygen tank and mittens!”

Ellen: “Got ‘em!”

Me: “It takes a long time to get to the top, so we have to go real fast coming down the other side to get to school on time, so buckle up!”

Ellen: “Done!”

In the cafetorium at Ellen’s school where I was performing a lunchtime concert

I wrote a song called Ellen’s Ride, based on the route filtered through our imaginations. I presented a rough recording of a rough performance of the song on a CD to Ellen and her mom on Ellen’s tenth birthday. As we listened to it, Ellen’s mom asked Ellen if she knew the places in the song. Ellen said, “Yeah, Mom, that’s our bus route.”

Some time after that, I got the idea to add illustrations to the song, and create a picture book for children. I enlisted the help of my good friend Darrin Kobetich, a very talented guitarist and graphic artist. It was as if he pulled the images out of my head and made them real. Neither of us had ever made a book before. The process seemed far more involved and challenging than recording music and making a CD, so the project sat on a shelf for a very long time.

A few months ago, I was invited to Ellen’s college graduation party. Where had the time gone?!

I asked Darrin if we could get a hard copy by the party date. I really wanted to give Ellen the first copy for her graduation. Darrin worked hard on the formatting and other details that were needed to make it happen. He got us over the hump, and I was able to present the new book to Ellen, and play the song for her and her family and friends.

I feel very fortunate to have made this lasting connection with Ellen and her wonderful family.

Now we’re getting ready to release the book Ellen’s Ride to the world on Oct 5. We’re planning a Book Launch in Austin, where you get to meet the author and the illustrator. Darrin and I will do a musical performance and book signing.

I’m very excited to start this new chapter (pun intended.)

I’m looking forward to working more with Darrin. I have a few songs in mind that would make great picture books.

Ellen’s college graduation party 2024

The Writer

Greetings!

I know I haven’t posted in a very long time, but there’s a very good reason for that. My current bus route, carried over from last year, is the easiest, quietest, smoothest, most drama-free route I’ve ever had. I have two schools; one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. They are both magnet schools. The students worked very hard to get into these schools. They’re focused on saving the planet or taking over the world, and don’t have the time, interest, or bandwidth to raise hell on the bus. My morning school is all girls, middle and high school age. In the afternoon I have high school.

While it is a very pleasant route, (the kids are kind, polite, courteous, etc) it lacks blogworthy material. I miss the loud and lovely chaos of the little ones. My current groups are far too advanced for my quiz time. How do you spell HEB? What is the phone number for 911? They wouldn’t even bother to scoff at questions like that, although I did stump a few students with, “What is the square root of all evil?”

One crafty young chap came up with 25.8069758. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own time.

My afternoon school allows bus drivers to come in from the heat as we wait for the school day to end. They have couches and chairs in the halls. One day I was sitting on one of the couches, playing my guitar. My friend Juan was sitting across from me. We were wondering out loud about the students carrying large objects down the hall.

Where is he going with that kayak paddle?

Why is she carrying a globe?

Is that a replica of a reptile?

We asked some of the kids about these oversized objects. They said they were hall passes.

Juan and I watched in amusement as kids carted broom sticks and beach balls down the hall. One student turned to me and said, “Nice guitar!”

I said, “It’s a hall pass.”

Sometimes we have to move to another hall because our regular hallway is packed with students rehearsing lines for a play, debating, or solving problems. These young folks are studious and very much into their school work, unlike Yours Truly way back when…

(Rewind to the previous century)

I was usually the first kid to get my boom box confiscated on the first day of school. I slept through social studies and English classes to the point where I had to retake them in the summer. More than once. As far as book reports were concerned, I flat out refused to do them. I didn’t see the point in reading a book and writing a report on it. I would not have graduated on time, had the principal, Peter K. Lynch, not plucked me from the hall one day to ask me what was going on. I went to his office every day after school where he helped me create outlines and guided me in writing the papers I needed to turn in.

In 9th grade, I had an assignment to write a report about Shakespeare. My friend Brendan (the kid who taught me my first guitar riffs – Whole Lotta Love and I Ain’t Got You) and I decided to write a parody of an Iron Maiden song. We transformed The Trooper into The Writer. We cranked up the practice amp and hit record on the old Panasonic shoebox tape recorder. We blasted through the opening riff and jammed out as we shouted, “He wrote a poem and he wrote a play, he always knew just what to say…”

When it came to turn in the paper, we brought the Panasonic to the teacher at the front of the room.

She hit ‘Play’ as the whole class listened. The teacher was impressed. We got an A on our ‘paper’!

One year, they took me out of my regular English class and put me in a tiny room with 5 or 6 other kids and a teacher named Joe Teta. One of the kids in class was my old friend Rob Healy. We’ve known each other since we were toddlers and we’re still close today. It was a creative writing class, which I never knew existed. Our classroom was little more than a maintenance closet. I wonder if it was even in the school’s blueprints.

Mr. Teta gave us assignments that were very different from my other class. He gave a list of topics or prompts. He said we could choose one or make one up and write about it. No outlines, no forms or structure.

I could write whatever I want?!?! I wrote and wrote. I was really into horror movies and heavy metal, so my stories had a gory edge to them. Mr. Teta said that if he didn’t know me so well, he would be very nervous. When I didn’t feel like writing I would draw a picture. I had so much fun in that class. I’m not sure how Rob got into that class, but his warped imagination made him a perfect fit.

I was able to kick my writing game up a notch, thanks to my dear friend Sue, who was my girlfriend in high school. Sue not only “helped” me with some of those papers, she also gave me assignments from a book called Six Weeks to Words of Power. I learned a plethora of fancy words.

Well, I really went off on a tangent there, didn’t I?

That’s okay because it’s My Blog and I can write whatever I want!

peace

Did you see that?!

I turned the corner and activated the loading lights as I do every day. This morning something was different. I opened the door as the student approached. I got the sense I was seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing.

Her face! I had never seen her face below her eyes before. I said, “Where is your mask?”

She looked up at me, waiting for me to check her temperature. I started to repeat myself but thought better of it. She can’t hear me talking through a three layer cotton mask and a plastic face shield. I lifted the shield and pointed to my own mask. She had a moment of shock and embarrassment as she patted her pockets.

I raised a finger in a “Wait a second” gesture. I pulled a box of masks from my PPE kit and handed one to her with gloved hand. She put the mask on. Her temperature was fine. She boarded the bus and all was well.

That moment of seeing something I shouldn’t see sparked a memory from several years ago.

I had just left the school in the afternoon with a busload of middle school students. We were stopped at a red light next to a minivan. I looked up at the mirror when I heard a ruckus in the bus. The boys were hootin’ and hollerin’ and getting out of their seats to get a good look at something outside the bus. I looked out the window to see what captured their attention. In the back seat of the minivan was a girl of about 11 or 12, apparently one of their schoolmates, taking off her shirt to change into her soccer uniform. I turned my attention back to the boys, trying in vain to get them to sit down. They were too busy giving themselves whiplash as they worked at getting a better look at the topless girl before she pulled her jersey on.

The girl got dressed, the boys settled back into their seats, and the light turned green. We drove on. For the next mile or two I could hear them saying, “Did you see that?!”

Stay safe and healthy this holiday season so we can celebrate together next year.

22 Years!

My friend Ida Collins recently celebrated 44 years as a bus driver for AISD.  Ida, I just reached the halfway point. 22 years! I started on the 14th of October, 1998. That was in another century! Before that I never held a job for more than a year. I would get bored and move on. After twenty two years I’m still not bored; kids have a way of keeping it interesting. And this year it all got a lot more interesting.
This is my original school bus guitar. I call it Charlie after the late Charlie Fischer, my hometown neighbor who fisched it out of the trash in 1986 and gave it to me. (It looked a lot nicer back then.) I brought Charlie out of retirement because my second school bus guitar, the baby Taylor is falling apart. Both guitars have many layers of kids’ signatures from the past two decades. It’s an end of school year ritual which, like so many other end of school year rituals, was thwarted by a pandemic.

School shut down on March 13, 2020. I had a field trip on March 12. In addition to my 120 regular route students, I hauled fifty or so kids from another school to a museum where they mingled with hundreds of kids from other schools. It is difficult to comprehend that now. Did that really happen? I’m pretty sure it did. The date is still in my calendar.

After a month or so of isolation, I went back to work driving a wifi bus. The buses are wifi hotspots for students learning online who don’t have internet service. Typically in the summer, we’re out touring to the west coast or east coast playing music. This year I stayed home and drove the wifi bus during which time I changed my name from Mr. Bus Driver Man Sir to Mr. Hot Spot Man Sir. The wifi bus isn’t quite as exciting as driving through the Rockies, visiting with good friends, and performing on the Oregon coast while watching the waves of the Pacific crash against the shore across the street from the venue, but it’s a job that I’m very thankful to have. We lost a lot of gigs like every other musician I know but I’ve had steady income doing something that helps out some kids in these challenging times, even if it felt like I was doing nothing at all. Every so often a parent would come out and thank me from behind a mask, reminding me that it wasn’t nothing.

Last week I started hauling kids once again. It’s a far cry from the past. I wear mask, gloves, and face shield when I point my laser ray gun temperature checker at the students before they board the bus. Then I tell them to sanitize their hands and go to the back of the bus. All 25 windows are open to keep fresh air circulating. I spray the seats down with disinfectant after each route. So far I haven’t had more than eight kids in the bus at one time. And that seems like a lot these days. Sometimes it’s just one student. It’ll change over time but I feel like we’re in a delicate balancing act. I asked my lone middle school student haw many kids were in class with her. She said six. I’ve seen masked teachers with as many masked children going through their lessons under an oak tree in front of the school.

Interesting times. There’s certainly no room for boredom.

Stay safe and be well