"Rural Bus Routes Part of Milano Students’ Journey to Education" by Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram:

Rural Bus Routes Part of Milano Students’ Journey to Education

by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram

March 19, 2012

MILANO - The pathway to knowledge was often a bumpy, dusty and downright tiring

twiceaday sojourn in rural Texas in the 1950s.

Milano schools ferried pupils to and from their homes aboard a no-frills line of

passenger buses that sometimes took more than an hour to navigate the washboard,

unpaved labyrinths of educational district hinterland.

Children who hailed along back roads around Milano had the one perk of a school

district-supplied tiny shelter to weather out the wait for their respective trips to

school.

“The bus was never on time,” said Barkley Lagrone, who with his brothers Dennis and

Claude was shielded from downpours, hailstones and sleet pellets in the corrugated tin

confines of a small-sized bus stop set up at a point that balanced home and the nearest

public road in the Smyrna community.

“When school started we had to chase out the wasps, yellow jackets and dirt daubers,

and watch out for snakes,” Lagrone said. Bus huts typically were a tiny 4x6

contraption made of a tin- covered two-by-four framework. They were larger in areas

that needed to accommodate more passengers.

“They were dotted all over the place,” Lagrone said. “They had a board to put your

books and stuff on and maybe a bench seat. They kept you out of the rain, but when it

was real cold our parents took us to school.”

When the brothers grew old enough to drive, they merrily left the arduous school bus

trip behind.

Bus routes were a long and taxing affair for students, with some routes mapped out to

include pupil pickups and deliveries from the Gause area.

But the longest trip carried students from homes almost in Cameron, said Kay Ditto

Moraw, whose father, Ike Ditto, drove Milano school buses for 30 years before retiring.

Ditto, at one time in his bus driving career, carried black students to the East Milano

Elementary School and to Aycock High School in Rockdale, then back to their homes.

Ditto’s route began so early in the morning, Kay waited until he had completed the

long, winding and rutted road trip down various country lanes before boarding at the

Ditto home at FM 3242 and FM 2095.

Patient and long-suffering bus drivers somehow managed to quell 25 to 30 energetic -

sometimes carsick, laughing, crying, fighting, yelling or hyper-active - charges.

Drivers often administered verbal discipline or parental wisdom when needed, while

keeping an eye on their noisy passengers via a large mirror. They juggled inside

activity with watching traffic and piloting a very conspicuous, bright yellow extended,

stick-shifted vehicle down highways and over a dizzying network of county roads.

Ditto and the team of Milano drivers fulfilled their responsibilities of transportation

and safety with amazing aplomb, Moraw said.

The secret: bus drivers must have loved their jobs and cared about children or they

wouldn’t have been bus drivers. Ike Ditto, for example, loved children and knew each

one of his passengers by name. Kay was jealous that other children were getting the

attention she deserved “because he was my dad.”

Lagrone recalled that his uncle David Pratt drove the bus at times, and he can still

recite the names of other bus driver that piloted his brothers and neighbors to and

from Milano school. Lagrone at one point was assigned a seat directly behind the driver

because of minor incidents of mischief. Similarly, Ditto aligned the girls in one row

of seats, the boys in the other.

On the Hanover route, one family’s first-grader son was so apprehensive about starting

school that when his parents put him on the bus, he bolted out the door, ran off and

hid in the woods all day.

For a time after that, it was the driver’s daughter’s assignment to hold onto the youth

to keep him from running away. It was a chore she hated. Ultimately, Kay rode the

school bus year after year until one of her siblings was old enough to drive and they

took the family vehicle to school.

The Sandy Creek bus route, according to schoolhouse scuttlebutt, carried some large-

sized high school boys who talked their driver into stopping so they could disembark

and smoke, Lagrone said.

Routes that passed beside community stores had the perk of stopping in for junk food

refueling with chips, candy, sodas and ice cream.

Bus accidents were extremely rare, though routes continued steadfastly through driving

rain storms, muddy roads and heavy highway traffic days. Flat tires were not uncommon.

Some buses in the fleet had routine breakdowns and were put in the shop for bus drivers

to repair them, while a musty-smelling old standby would be driven out, washed and

pulled into the back of the school for loading. Buses came to school so dusty that

windows and lights had to be washed.

Bus passengers were like family, Moraw said. Passengers once aboard and en route to

school or home became a microcosm on their own — a close-knit community oblivious of

age, school class ification, the rich or the poor, the academically endowed or

challenged, or athletically inclined versus sporting event clumsy.

“We were all the same on the bus,” Moraw said.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com

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Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram