Snow up to My Armpits ...

I never rode a school bus to school.

As a kid in Enid, Okla., and Amarillo, Tex., I walked or rode my bike. Later, in Hiram, Ohio (7th grade through high school), I also walked (up Hiram's steep north hill! snow up to my ...) or, later, a high school buddy with a car would pick me up.

In my school years, the only times I rode a school bus were for field trips (few and far between) or to basketball games. (Later, I would have the "pleasure" of riding buses for field trips at the school where I taught--and, for quite a few years, chartered buses from Aurora, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., for our 8th Grade Washington Trip each fall--I'm still recovering from those experiences!)

I should say that I even walked to kindergarten--about 3-4 blocks. Alone. (Unthinkable these days.) I sometimes didn't make it because (as I've written here before) Kiwanis Park was right on the way, and, well, I occasionally couldn't resist the swings, the merry-go-round, the creek with the crawdads ...

The teacher, Mrs. Dugan, would call Mom; she would come find me in the park, walk with me the rest of the way.

I never thought at the time that Mom was probably terrified about my absence. There are a lot of things in this life that you don't really understand until you've experienced them yourself. I really believe I became a more conscientious teacher when our son was born--and for the first time I realized, truly realized, how parents of my students felt.

So, anyway, Dad, born in 1913, grew up on a farm in Oregon and sometimes rode a horse to his rural school (and Dad lived to see the moon landing--and beyond!), but he usually walked: He had nearly a dozen siblings--and not that many horses.

Years later, when my brothers and I would complain about snow, he would actually employ that snow-up-to-my-armpits line. But it didn't really diminish our grousing. We were spoiled--not the archetypal "spoiled brats" but spoiled by the good fortune of being American kids in the 1950s and beyond.

Dad, as I said, had lived on a farm; his own father had died suddenly when Dad was in high school. But Dad went to work--worked his way through college during the Great Depression--went off to WW II (both the Pacific and Europe--earning a Bronze Star)--came home--completed a Ed.D. program at the University of Oklahoma--got called back to active duty during the Korean War, a conflict that sent him not into battle again (thank goodness) but to Amarillo AFB, where he served as a chaplain--returned to Enid to serve on the faculty of the now-defunct Phillips University ... I could go on.

And my brothers and I?

None of that. About the biggest crisis in my boyhood was not having enough money for a Popsicle. And, of course, those inches of snow that I always saw as a great impediment to my walking to school.