I am not sure how many of my readers remember their first day in high school, whatever grade was the first of high school for them. In my day and my high school it was 10th grade and September 1961. In many school districts years ago it was an 8/4 or a 5/3/4 split with 9th grade being the first year of high school. After returning from Villanova (A Perfect Summer), where my father had a job as a groundskeeper for the summer, I made plans to attend Easton Area High School, which was brand new. Ours would be the first class to go completely through the whole school, although the Technical and Industrial building (forerunner of the Vo-Tech) actually opened the year before, so those students of the class of 1963 who took vocational studies could claim they were the first.
After a disastrous summer financially, my parent’s had little to spend on my brother and I for school, but I had decided I wanted a pair of patent leather shoes I had seen at Farr’s in Center Square Easton, present location of the Crayola Factory Museum. Looking back, these were the ugliest shoes I could have chosen and being patent leather, not the smartest thing for a boy to be wearing, but they gave in and bought them for me. Not only were they ugly, they were tight and uncomfortable too. You shined them by using Vaseline. Dad should have had his head examined for letting me get them, but I had to deal with them the best I could.
Having grown up in South Easton, where we had neighborhood schools through 9th grade, I had never ridden a bus to school until that first day in high school. It wasn’t even a school bus as such. The local transit company had bought a number of large buses to put on the school bus runs, but they were regular public transit buses, and totally unsuited for the hilly terrain in Easton. The transmissions did not transmit enough power for the bus to do more than crawl up Smith Avenue to South Easton, or College Avenue to College Hill.
If you were sitting, they had a comfortable ride at least. Notice I said if you were sitting. Contrary to regulations today, which mandate students sitting while bus is in motion, these buses were usually crowded with standee students by the time we got to school. An accident even at slow rolling speed could have proven disastrous. Buses I was on actually had 2 accidents but they will be discussed separately. By the time the buses got to the far end of West Ward, the section of Easton along Butler St. west of about 9th St. (also Washington, Lehigh, and Ferry Sts. as you went north from Butler), they would be packed. I counted over 20 standing one day. That would never be allowed today, but we always wanted to ride with our friends.
There was a bus route 2 blocks from my home, but all my friends seemed to go down to Berwick St. for the bus, so I usually walked down there with a few friends of mine from the Webster School. There were actually 3 buses on that run. Usually they ran close together, but sometimes they would be spread out. We always waited in the Laundromat at Berwick and Valley, which was always warm in cold weather. Some of our friends who lived close to there waited there as well so it was a good gang that got on the bus there.
We usually got on the second bus, because there were enough stops before this one that the first bus was already beginning to get crowded. The third bus was generally so late that we would get in after the last bell rang for homeroom. If we really wanted to get into school late for some reason, we would just ride the third bus. If we were late, all we had to do was tell them we were on the third bus. That was accepted as an excuse without question.
As I said earlier, the buses I happened to be riding on were involved in 2 accidents. The first was at St. John and Nesquehoning Sts., where there was an Acme Store on the corner and a blinker light controlling traffic. Those damn blinkers did very little other than make a nice commission for the salesman who sold them to the city because they didn't control traffic very well. A car pulled out of Nesquehoning St. and was hit by the right front corner of the bus. No one was really hurt and the car got the worst of the damage. Nowadays they would have carted all of us to the hospital to get checked out, but we just waited until the police got all the information and then went merrily on our way.
The second accident was a little more serious as we hit a child in front of the Courthouse on Walnut St. This happened on one of the few occasions I took the bus home. My father worked at the school and I would usually go home with him. Near to the place we hit the boy is St. Anthony's Parochial School and they were coming out after their Halloween party. I don't know how the accident actually came to happen, but I found out the next day from the boy's sister, who was in my homeroom in 10th grade, that the bus ran over his leg without breaking it. Badly bruised, he went to school the next day, no doubt with a new found respect for busses.
Easton Area High School was a new building which wasn't completely done yet. This meant that the teachers were very little help either in finding where we had to be. But after a few days of going everywhere with a map of the school, we were able to get around like experienced students in a familiar school. It is all so real to me yet, and two generations of students have been through Easton Area High School since my footsteps first echoed in its new smelling halls. No doubt grandchildren of the first few classes to attend the 'new' school have already graduated.