I think I may have told this story before but I couldn't find it, so I'll tell it again. I lived about a mile from our elementary school, which was a 1-8th-grade school. Our house was about half-way down a hill from the church. In nice weather, we nearly always walked home from school, and even sometimes in not-so-nice weather, but I wasn't about to get up early enough to walk to school, especially considering that there were horses and chickens to feed too. Normally, we went to school in a regular yellow school bus, and the bus route had it coming up the hill toward the church. More than once, in the winter, my brothers and I would stand out by the road waiting for the bus, and it wouldn't be able to make it up the hill because no one salted or sanded our rural road. Although it wasn't much of a distance for us to walk down the hill to the bus, we didn't do that. We would watch it try to make the hill a few times; then, when it finally turned around, we'd go back in the house and tell mom that the bus didn't come. Dad was already at work, and mom didn't drive, so that was usually a good one. Sometimes, it would come around the other way and pick us up late though. Once we wet the road down to ice it up, but that was a lot of work, given that water hoses didn't work in the winter. What was always fun though, was when our regular school bus broke down. They had only one spare bus, and that was an old red, white and blue bus. The best thing about the red, white and blue school bus was that it rarely made it all the way to school without breaking down or running off the road. Even if it did make it, by the time they dragged the red, white and blue one out, we had already missed at least an hour of school. When the bus broke down or got stuck along the way, they would send the 7th-grade teacher out to pick everyone up because he had a station wagon. He would have to make a few trips in order to get everyone to school so we'd jockey for being in the last load. Although it made little sense, and his station wagon wasn't a Model A, I still remember the song we would often sing. I thought of that while posting the jump-rope thread, as some of those were equally nonsensical. Jingle bells, Shotgun shells B-B's all the way Oh, what fun it is to ride In Soper's Model A.
We never rode a bus to school because we live in the city. There no sidewalks but there were paths made by alongside the road which lead directly to the school - green in the summer, muddy in the Spring, and the snow was packed hard in the winter.
Riding the bus was one of the best parts of high school. Our stop was the 2nd on the route in the morning, so I got to sit in the front seat. Long route, standing room only by the end, like sardines, and most of us were still asleep when we got there. Going home we were all awake, mostly.
We lived in the city too @Von Jones but we could get the bus from right outside our house if we had the tuppence for the fare ( no school buses just regular double decker buses..).. we rarely had the money , so we almost always walked the 2 miles to school, then back at mid-day for lunch ..we only had an hour and a 1/4 for lunch so we had to run back much of the way, wolf down a bowl of knorr packet chicken noodle soup or something similar.. ( my mother wasn't any kind of cook) and get back to school again....and at 4pm when school ended if it was raining hard so many kids were getting on the bus it was packed...so we knew by the time the bus conductor got to us for the fare (which we didn't have) we'd have got nearly home so we'd just get off at the bus stop nearest home. Sometimes he'd get to us first, and he'd throw us off the bus, and we'd only have gone 2 bus stops but it was better than nothing...lol I was in foster homes at various times through my childhood, and all of those were within less than a mile of school, and not on a bus route so we always walked
We walked until we entered high school and were trusted to take public transportation. Yeah! That meant money in our pockets and we would walk to school anyway . I loved to walk except when the weather was bad.