Reflections On The Last Day Of School Past

A warm summer day. Cozy warm. Not hot.

The trees and grass twinkle silently in the soft unseen wind, lush from the recent rains. Green. Not that dark green of July. Closer to the lighter greens of the Spring’s new growth.

The bright sun brings out the yellows in that green. But those brilliant rays wash out the sharpness of all color, much like you would see in an overexposed photograph. The effect only brings more tenderness to the scene.

Windows open in the moving school bus allow a gentle breeze to circulate the fresh temperate air.

It’s the last day of school. The last bus ride home. You can feel the excitement. Everyone is chattering with delight.

No more pencils. No more books. No more teachers’ dirty looks.

Yes, school’s out. For the entire summer.

Looking back, I think for a moment, “Why the excitement?” I could understand mine. After all, my birthday was a mere few weeks away. More than that, summer vacation ushers in a whole slew of family events and parties. My father’s birthday. My parents’ anniversary (on the Fourth of July). My uncle’s birthday. My mother’s birthday. And don’t forget the Big Tree Fireman’s Carnival and the Erie County Fair. Yep, summer promised a never-ending joy of good times with family.

But what about my friends? School presented the best opportunity to hang out with them. Otherwise, they lived too far to visit during the summer. Weren’t they worried about not seeing or playing with their school friends?

Then it hits me. They’re probably just like me. Not that they have summer birthdays (pure statistics would suggest most didn’t). Rather, they had hordes of friends in their own neighborhoods. These wouldn’t necessarily be school friends, but they’d be friends, nonetheless.

Some of them even shared the same particular advantage as me. I had a brother. A built-in, always-there friend. He might have been a year younger, but that didn’t mean much. We tended to do and like the same things, but were different enough not to be annoying duplicates of each other. Or worse, intense competitors.

Indeed, our similarities created an enduring bond. We both liked football. We both liked to ride bikes. We both liked picking and eating wild strawberries. (Kenny liked the eating part most.) And we had all summer to appreciate these activities.

But we were also different. Those differences, ironically, created a symbiotic relationship that only strengthened our brotherly bond. For example, I developed into a quarterback while he became an adept receiver. I liked blue. He liked red. (Although both our bikes were blue.) He was a cowboy. I was an astronaut. Although when we played GI Joes, he had the Army/astronaut while I had the Marine (who really wanted to be an Air Force fighter pilot).

Wow. Remembering this, could there be anything that wouldn’t make us enthusiastic about summer vacation? And the fact that we had our good friends halfway up the street only sweetened our desire for the two-month break.

And we obviously weren’t alone. The busload of kids throbbed with anticipation. Not just for weeks of playdates, but for what many expected would be a special last day of school treat.

Before we left school that day, the halls were rife with furtive mumbling. Rumor had it that the bus drivers were going to take all the kids to a nearby ice cream parlor. It wasn’t Fran-n-Ceil’s, but it was big. And it was popular. And… ice cream!

You with me? Can you see why the bus was so alive? Do you understand why the soft light of the warm sun that precise afternoon only enhanced the expectation of that final bus ride on the last day of school?

There’s a little more to this story.

Throughout the entire year, certain elements of the bus insisted on acting in the most unruly fashion. These were older kids. Mostly boys. But they did have the older girl defenders (as well as older girl detractors). They would test the patience of the poor bus driver.

On quite a few occasions, that testing crossed some unwritten line and the bus driver would explode. She brought her wrath down upon the entire bus, not just the guilty perpetrators. In 2023, this would not be allowed. But back then, well, if the rawest of recruits failed to climb that hill fast enough, the entire unit would be required to surmount that slope again. And again. And again. Until the laggard got it right.

Anyone who has watched the movie Miracle knows what I mean. You remember. It’s the part where Herb Brooks had the team constantly skate sprints until Mike Eruzione finally answered the “Where are you from?” question correctly.

The bus to Woodlawn Elementary School, however, wasn’t the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team. We were just a horde of kids being driven to and from school by one solitary adult. It was her job to maintain order on the bus for the safety of all.

Some days, that order developed into nonstop chaos.

Not that this was anything new. A little more than a decade earlier, the same bus would transport a different but similarly riotous group of kids. Only the instigators in that era would include my father. He and his friends would spend the entire ride back and forth from school in an endless rumble.

Back then, the bus driver let “boys be boys.” Nothing bad ever came of it.

Maybe the nation was different in the immediate aftermath of World War II. But during the height of the Cold War, it could not countenance this type of misbehavior. And the bus driver angrily made the entire bus know. Again. And again. And again. The laggards never cared to get it right. In fact, the sight of innocent little kids suffering for their misdeeds only motivated them more.

But the last day of school was a traditional day of forgiveness. Year-long school feuds would be mended. Heck, even I ended my own personal battle with my biggest competitor (we both liked astronomy, so we spent the entire year trying to convince the teacher which one of us knew the most about the subject). We agreed to a peace treaty in the boys’ room before several witnesses. Through a handshake. Yes, we washed our hands first.

So, on this last day of school, we pulled out of the bus loop. Our bus sluggishly made its way behind the other buses onto Lake Shore Road. Within the mouths of each pint-size passenger, tiny taste buds could hardly wait for the delicacy to come.

Mind you, New York Route 5 (a.k.a. “Lake Shore Road”) was a massive six-lane highway. This was to accommodate the traffic during the thrice daily shift changes at the Bethlehem Steel plant. Our school sat right on the edge of that belching mill. Thankfully, the midday shift change occurred after we left school.

The ride up the highway to the Ford Stamping Plant was school-bus slow. You could feel every gear change ascending the ramp to the bridge before the plant. Once beyond that gleaming factory, the ice cream destination appeared.

As the long line of buses ahead of us began making right-hand turns into the parlor, I noticed something odd. We remained in the innermost left lane, two lanes away from the lane we needed to be in if we were going to turn into the parking lot with the rest of the buses.

The rest of the kids apparently didn’t notice. Their cheering swelled with a deafening crescendo.

Until we drove right past the ice cream place and all those buses with happy children.

The bus fell quiet.

I looked up at the mirror above the bus driver. She was looking into it, too, surveying her now subdued young charges behind.

Her eyes squinted with delight and the ends of her lips curled upward in a devious Grinch-like smile.

I have to admit. I smiled with her in celebration of her victory. Her last unspoken word on the last day of school.