(Editor’s note — The names have been changed to protect the guilty.)
My mother told this story about my dad, Jack White, when he was the 14 year-old bus driver at Culleoka School. He had been driving the bus since he was twelve, having been recommended for the job by his mentor, Bill Orr, the principal at Bryant Station.
It seems that the previous driver, a Mr. Harris, had been scaring the daylights out of kids when he drove. “He couldn’t drive a duck to water,” my dad observed. So when the Maury County School superintendent asked Mr. Orr to suggest a replacement, he immediately chose my dad with no objections from the Education Department.
Anyhow, the story:
Hubert Brooks came from a good Scribner’s Mill family. His parents were faithful churchgoers and a well-respected farm couple. Furthermore, his three younger siblings were nice as they could be.
But Hubert was a jerk – and he worked hard at it.
In fact, once when a nephew’s girlfriend was visiting the Brooks home, she inadvertently slammed the screen door and he called her a “House Ape.”
In 1938, Hubert was a junior at Central High School and in those days the transportation routine from Scribner’s Mill was to catch the Culleoka school bus to Fountain Heights School to ride the Central High bus back to town – reversing the process in the afternoon.
One morning, Jack drove the bus up to the Brooks farm and Hubert boarded with his two brothers and sisters. Immediately, since he was the oldest kid on the bus (which included the driver), Hubert began to take over. He bossed everyone on the bus all the way from Scribner’s Mill to Fountain Heights, telling them where to sit, and to “shut up” when they talked too loud, and whatever else command came to his mind. He had appointed himself Captain of the Ship.
Jack tolerated the behavior without comment.
That afternoon, at the end of the school day, all the kids once again climbed on the bus at Fountain Heights to be returned to their families. All the children except for Hubert were present, for the Central High School bus had not yet arrived. As the last school child ascended the metal steps, the high school bus appeared and Hubert burst out the door running for all he was worth toward his ride home.
He was within a step of the bus, when Jack closed the door in his face and slowly drove away, giving Hubert an opportunity to run behind the bus awhile in a futile attempt to catch up.
That day, Jack White taught Hubert Brooks that sometimes the Pilot, the man who holds the wheel, is the true Captain of the Ship.
