The big blue Catholic school bus

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

My royal limousine fifty years ago, for the last blissful, carefree school year of my childhood, was a dark blue, forty seat, standard-issue, military bus.

We (my parents, two sisters, one brother, youngest child me, and our collie dog named Laddie) lived in government housing on Hill Air Force Base in Northern Utah. On our living room wall a banner proclaimed, “The Family that Prays Together Stays Together.” For my third grade school year, my Irish Catholic parents decided to pull us all out of public school and enroll us in the St. Joseph’s Catholic schools in nearby Ogden.

My siblings (12th grade, 11th grade, 9th grade) attended the fairly-new and lovely high school nestled in the foothills of east Ogden. In what seemed like undeserved exile at first, I was enrolled in the old, decrepit grade school on Lincoln Avenue, on the poorer and tougher west side of the old railroad town.

Soon, however, I hardly noticed the rather shady surroundings. I thrived in the environment, made new friends, played touch football with them on concrete fields, joined a little league baseball team called the “Robins,” and secretly enjoyed it when a female classmate and her sister teased me about my metal lunch box featuring Tony the Tiger on one side, and the Rice Krispies trio (Snap, Crackle and Pop) on the other. I also loved the big blue bus which each day, with what seemed like great ceremony, dropped us off and picked us up in full view of everyone at the front of the school.

Our house was about a forty minute bus ride from school. I enjoyed being together with my siblings during the commute and based on sheer numbers alone, we ran the bus. There were four of us, three in high school, and some extra firepower because one of us was a senior. Usually, that meant I had a reserved seat in the front because our regular driver Joe picked up the high school students first. We were benevolent bus rulers. Although we may have wanted to knock each other out at times, no one dared pick on one of the O’Briens because within moments there would be four of us to confront. The Fighting Irish indeed.

Actually, I do not remember any fights, but there was a lot of group singing. This helped pass the driving time, in lieu of getting a head start on homework. We’d regularly chant the St. Joe High victory march and croon the school song. For some reason that eludes explanation even today, we’d also sing the then-popular television jingle for St. Joseph’s aspirin for children: “St. Joseph’s! St. Joseph’s! Aspirin for children! Down with fever! Down with pain!” I belted out the tunes as loudly as I could, adding fist pumps to punctuate my opposition to fever and pain. Joe the bus driver listened patiently, and smiled once in a while.

Of course, what we did not know at the time, or at least what I did not know, was that our apparently happy family was unravelling around us even as we ruled the bus. Right after that school year ended, my parents were getting an acrimonious divorce, Laddie the dog was dead, and the family was cleaved in half, two of us children living in California with Mom. The big blue bus was long gone, and I was about to attend three different schools for fourth grade while my sister Karen attended three separate high schools for her senior year.

Perhaps our singing on the blue bus had foreshadowed the several years of divorce fever and pain that were just ahead. Where was that St. Joseph’s aspirin for children when you needed it?