The Wreck of the Ol' Nine-Aught

The wheels once fell off my school bus. And not metaphorically speaking.

Gaze upon the glory of Main Street in Arab, AL, the town where I grew up. That’s looking south. (It’s pronounced A-rab, by the way, with a long “a,” for reasons that I don’t have the will to get into right now).

If you were to turn around and look north, you’d see the site of the old Piggly Wiggly grocery store on the right—I’m not sure what’s there now—a gas station, and, across the street from that, the First Baptist Church. Then it’s a string of cozy little houses, a Wal-Mart (because of course), a group of thriving grocery stores and fast food places, and a thirty or forty minute stretch of pine tree-lined highway leading down Brindlee Mountain, across the Tennessee River, and into the Promised Land of Huntsville, with its multiple movie theaters and shopping centers. When my friends and I started to drive, we made that trek at least once a week, blasting celebratory rock & roll the entire way.

But we always had to come back.

As you might imagine, not a lot happened in Arab when I was a kid, outside of an endless series of high school football and basketball games, beauty pageants full of poofy hair and too much pancake makeup, and the yearly Christmas parade. I have a whole lot to say about this place, and believe me when I tell you, it doesn’t all sound like I’m describing a series of southern-fried Norman Rockwell paintings. But if we’re talking about big events, what I just listed is really about it.

There were, however, occasional anomalies, like the wheels falling off my school bus when I was 12 years old.

That’s what I said. The wheels on the bus didn’t just go ‘round and ‘round that day; they actually left the back of the damn bus— the rear end slammed to the ground REALLY HARD. When the other kids and I climbed out, you could see a portion of the drive shaft poking out and huge rubber tires still attached to the rear differential (that big contraption between the back wheels).

Here’s a picture I found of a bus that pulled the same stunt in Phoenix about ten years ago.

Imagine sitting in that thing when this happened! My sister, Christine, was on the bus, too. I actually flew out of my seat and my head bounced off the ceiling, then I dropped into the aisle on top of about thirty other shocked school children...some of whom deserved what they were getting, if you ask me.

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Here’s the whole story, which took place in the year of our Lord, 1975:

Arab was very proud of a group of new Blue Bird buses that the city purchased for its schools just a couple of years before the disaster. They looked a lot like this.

I know for certain they were Blue Bird buses because all the buses were numbered, and these were always referenced as “Blue Bird 1,” “Blue Bird 2,” “Blue Bird 3,” etc. They did that because there weren’t enough fancy new rides to pick up all of Arab’s children in the morning, so some of us were condemned to older transportation, most of which was perfectly fine, if not as snazzy as the Blue Birds.

But there was only one bus No. 90. That was my bus. And it looked like this.

It was properly painted, but that’s basically what we were dealing with. I could never figure out why it was emblazoned with a number 90. There certainly weren’t ninety school buses rolling around Arab every morning! There were only 6,500 people in the whole town!

Maybe it was ninety years old.

I was in junior high at the time, and the bus was driven by my sociology teacher, Mr. King. The two things I can remember about Mr. King are that he had a sense of humor, which could not be said of every teacher at Arab Junior High, and he once complained to us at length about his wife’s inability to read and properly fold a road map. He must have gone on about it for a good twenty minutes.

Anyway, everybody in the school laughed about No. 90. It looked like bruised fruit on wheels next to the ripe, succulent plums the other kids rode around in. But it got us where we were going on time, so I didn’t give a crap, except when Alabama temperatures pushed into the 80s and 90s. All the windows on the bus were jammed tight; you couldn’t jimmy them open if you had a crowbar. On hot days, you’d feel like Cool Hand Luke locked in “the box,” being made to get your head straight before first period started.

But that wasn’t a problem on the cold, overcast winter morning of the Great Wheel Expulsion. We were barreling toward the elementary school when a kid named Damon Knox, who was riding in the back seat, shouted out to Mr. King that he heard a noise, then a piece of metal fell off the bus and bounced down the road behind us. Mr. King told him not to worry about it, that the bus’s undercarriage was so rusty it was always shedding little pieces.

This was a mistake.

We made it to the elementary school and dropped off the youngest kids, then Mr. King put No. 90 back into gear and started pulling out for our trip to the junior high school.

That’s when it happened. There was a loud KABOOM, and, as I’ve already told you, my head slammed off the ceiling, and I ended up on the floor. I honestly thought a bomb had gone off.

I didn’t have time to wonder why someone would want to place an explosive device under our bus. I was too busy untangling myself from the other kids. When we all finally made it to safety, a few were crying and clutching sprained wrists, and one guy had a bloody nose.

But I was among the group who thought this was the coolest thing they ever experienced! I mean, come on— the wheels fell off the bus!!

Mr. King was relieved that no one was badly hurt, but he didn’t volunteer that the whole mess could have been avoided had he pulled over when he was informed that the bus was disintegrating! He just stood there shaking his head with his jaw hanging open while he stared at the spectacle, like he was watching his wife try to fold a road map.

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I hadn’t really thought about any of this again until a few years ago when I was surfing the Internet. I set out to learn more about it, but I couldn’t find a single reference to the event anywhere. So I decided—using Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as a rough guideline—to turn my experience into a sort of epic poem or folk song that could be handed down from generation to generation in Arab.

If we don’t remember the past we are doomed to repeat it, so here it is. I fooled with the timeline a little and didn’t mention losing the piece of metal, but that happens all the time in folk tunes. I bet I’ve heard twelve different reasons over the years why Frankie shot Johnny, so give me a break:

"The Wreck of the Ol' Nine-Aught"

Oh, the legend’s passed ‘round
From the school board on down
Of the bus called the rickety Nine-Aught
About the day it took sway and rattled away
And laid waste to young passengers school-taught

The weather was gray
In the air there blew hay
O’er the fields of cattle and lowing
The skies had turned cold
As the story is told
And the lawns were well beyond mowing

The smallest were first
The lucky dispersed
Big colorful crayons their longing
When from the back of the bus
There came quite a fuss
“Sir, we’ve heard a bit of a bonging.”

“Hold tongue!” called the King
“It means not a thing.
The Nine-Aught she’s always a-creakin’.
There’d be far more to say
On this godless day
If the bulk of her chassis weren’t weakened.”

The junior high school was next
Though the bus might be hexed
Gear one, on forward it rumbled
Gear two was forthcoming
Their progress quite stunning
But the passengers now would be humbled

From the aft of the rig
A concussion so big
The skulls of the kids rapped the ceiling
They fell scattered about
Blood pouring from snouts
School pants had been ruined from peeing

Nine-ought rested angled
Her rear-end now mangled
Her drive shaft stretched well out behind her
Though the Lord had saved all
From the wreckage each crawled
Surely, He could have been kinder

“By Christ!” cried the King
As the wounded felt stings
With welts that were suddenly rising
“I’ve never trusted this crate.
My distaste nearing hate.
But this disaster is oh so surprising!”

Some ribs had been bruised
The kids unenthused
The whiney ones now were a-crying
But they faired well that day
Some people say
And could wait many years before dying

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When a bus disperses asunder
Tossing babies like salad
It leads to a ballad
Of their innocence taken in plunder

The Nine-Aught still rolls
So the story is told
Through the misty Arabian school morn
Old Scratch is a-driving
And never arriving
His hope of redemption lies stillborn

But the kids from that day
Now grown, some moved away
Will forever remember his rough prank
When they crashed to the floor
Of that yellow-gold whore
The final act of a school bus that stank

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Tell me Joan Baez couldn’t sing the shit out of that!

The wild thing about all of this is that no one got sued! People didn’t do that fifty years ago. The school superintendent just went to each student’s house, rang the doorbell, and profusely apologized to the parents. My mom wasn’t very happy about what happened, but she accepted the apology.

I’m sure, though, that many of Arab’s parents were convinced Jesus Christ himself saved their child from being paralyzed, forgetting for a moment that Christ already had his hands full deciding who would win that year’s Auburn and Alabama football game.