School’s out for summer. The yellow school bus has been retired for the off-season, however come the fall the American icon will serve cities, suburbs, and rural communities from Alaska to Florida.

Type C has been very popular with most school boards with its no frill seating to deliver ninety little bodies with year-round dependability.

My perfect attendance awards of 1962 through 1965 were as much a testament to the Bluebird bus as my good health.

“You’re not sick unless you’re bleeding.” My mother liked to say whenever her children ran a temperature. There were six of us. She liked us out of the house.

Ken Kesey,author of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, painted a school bus in psychedelic color swirls for a trans-America voyage famousized by Tom Wolfe’s THE ELECTRIC KOOLAID ACID TEST. Thousands of noble school bus underwent similar transformations.

Hitchhiking I was picked up by several in the early 70s.

Hippie chicks, lice-ridden mattress, weed, and a slow ride.

I might have even dropped acid on one. That would have been nice.

The 1973 Gas Crisis harpooned these LSD land cruisers into extinction, however the yellow school bus survived in the real world.

They still transport millions of school children to their destination.

A shitty school where they’ll get bullied by fellow students and berated by ignorant teachers.

Evel Knievel once almost cleared 14 school buses.

Crash 101 was his first class that day.

Now a car fanatic has outfitted a school bus with a Phantom jet engine.

The top speed.

Over 300.

Really good on those cornfield straightaways in the fly-ver

For a view of a fast school bus please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU8zbLdUqAQ