Getting to elementary school

[debm55]

Last edited Thu May 4, 2023, 11:33 PM - Edit history (1)

How did you get to elementary back in the day? I walked. Do you think we walk because we had neighbor schools? And rode buses to the mega schools?

23 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	walked
	12 (52%)
	rode bike
	2 (9%)
	parents drove me
	2 (9%)
	rode bus
	5 (22%)
	other
	2 (9%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[True Dough]

1. I played hooky throughout elementary school

Self-taught. Some say I have a great mind. Perhaps the best mind ever known in history.

-Donald Trump

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I road a public bus in kindergarten and first grade.

I also took the public bus home by myself in kindergarten, as it was a morning kindergarten. Imagine. A five year old on the bus by herself.

The rest of elementary and junior high I took the school bus. Senior high, I walked the first year, then the bus after.

[debm55]

3. Same here, but I walked by myself to kindergarten at five years. I went in the afternoon. I walked

until 8 grade. We moved and I attended one of those mega schools-too far to walk, had to take the bus.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. I rode the public bus in Utica, NY at the age of five.

By myself. Even then, 1955, it was not common. Trust me.

The bus stop was on Genesee street, next to St. Francis de Sales Catholic school. I was in morning kindergarten, and I don't know exactly why I was the only one taking the bus back to North Utica. Anyway, the driver on that route quickly learned that I was okay to take the bus to the stop across from Humphrey Garden on Herkimer Road. Actually, it mattered which bus I caught. One brought me directly across the street from Humphery Garden, another meant I needed to get off at the intersection of Genesee Street and Herkimer road and walk about three blocks home. Keep in mind I was five years old, and very small for my age. But I did learn to negotiate the bus.

At one point, in the middle of the school year, my regular driver was apparently away on vacation. The usual bus drove right past me at my stop. As did the next one. I was standing there at the bus stop, crying, when my older brother, then on post lunch recess, saw me, and came over to see what was wrong. When the next bus came along, he made sure it stopped, put me on, and forcefully told the driver where I was going. He'd have been perhaps 10 years old at the time, but I've always treasured the memory of his taking care of me.

[Glorfindel]

4. I refused to ride the bus

So, I went in to work with my parents, about eight miles, and one of the teachers from my school picked me up and took me to school, which was about a mile from where I lived. By the time I started high school, I didn't mind riding the bus.

[debm55]

5. Did your teacher live near where you parents worked?

[Glorfindel]

7. Sorry for the delay in replying...I was dead-tired last night.

Miss Logan (my teacher) had to pass by my parents' business (a dry cleaners) on her way to school, so it was easy for her to pick me up. Anyway, she seemed to like me for some reason. She also took another teacher to the same school. My parents paid her five dollars a week to haul me there and back - lots more money in the mid-50's than it is now.

[malthaussen]

8. Funny you should ask.

In my neighborhood, initially, we walked to school, which involved crossing a fairly busy four-lane highway that had only one stoplight for miles. We were just on the border of how far the school district ruled was necessary for a bus.
It was dangerous dodging all the cars, so the mothers of the 'hood got together and picketed the elementary school, demanding a bus for the many children on the street (around a dozen, IIRC). Since protests like this were uncommon in 1962, KDKA TV actually sent a crew out to cover it -- and there I am on camera, walking up the steps to the front door of the school.

The school district relented, after a fashion, and decided to buy a station wagon which would be packed with all the kids to take them to and from school. For the driver, they elected my father, whose hobby was getting drunk and totalling cars (he killed at least one a year that way, as I recall). While that might have been a tragic decision, ultimately it didn't matter, because the station wagon broke down and the district refused to pay to have it fixed. So we kept walking.

Finally, in 1964, the school district supplied us with a VW bus which was driven by one of the mothers on the street. I don't know whether it eventually broke down or not, because my family moved away from the area shortly thereafter.

This was a lower-middle-class neighborhood, so few families had more than one car (and ours often had none, if my father had been indulging his hobby recently). Few mothers drove, either -- my own did not (until 1972). I am positive that the idea of parents delivering their children to school each morning would have been laughed at if anyone had suggested it in the early '60s. As for bicycles, again, we were a lower-middle-class neighborhood. Few families could afford them for their children. After my family left the neighborhood and our economic position improved somewhat, my brother and I did get bicycles, and I rode mine to elementary school until it, too broke down; my brother was in Junior High by then, and took the school bus.

-- Mal