My mom was the Executive Secretary at the Henderson County (NC) YMCA when I was growing up. I lived at the Y. I can’t think of summers without thinking about riding in the big, hand-painted, white, regenerated school bus that the Y called transportation. This bus was a roundnosed rattle-trap that hauled kids for years and years. It provided me with some of the best times of my childhood.

In my early years, I would hop on that bus daily to head out to the Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute to swim. The Y did not have a pool and Fruitland let us use their pool for free. After I learned to swim there, I started helping to teach when I was twelve. I would assist with the little screamers. Some days the director’s daughter and I would swim and play. Sometimes we would just roam the countryside. But the bus trips to and fro were the most fun parts of the day. People would fight to sit on the back row of the bus, because the county roads were holey. When we would hit bumps, everyone would bounce out of their seats by 3 or 4 inches. On the back seats, some potholes would send kids flying a full foot in the air – best roller coaster in town was the back seat of that old jalopy white bus.

Going and coming, we would sing camp songs: classics such as “Little Cabin in the Woods”, “Little Bunny Foo Foo”, “Baby Shark”, etc. Then there were songs that were a little less known including: “’Annie Mae, Where are you going?” ‘Upstairs to take a bath.’ ‘Annie Mae had legs like toothpicks and a neck like a giraffe.’ ‘Annie Mae stepped in the bathtub. Annie Mae pulled out the plug.’ ‘Oh my goodness! Oh my soul! There goes Annie Mae down that hole.’ ‘Annie Mae! Annie Mae!’ “Blurp, blurp, blurp.’” Or the infamous – “’Granny’s in the cellar.’ ‘Brother can’t you smell her cooking biscuits on that yuck old dirty stove?’ ‘In her eye there is a matter that keeps dripping in the batter and she whistles as it (SNORT!) goes down her nose!’ ‘Down her nose! Down her nose!’ ‘And she whistles as it (SNORT!) goes down her nose!’”

(You don’t even have to know the tunes to enjoy those songs!) Great songs sung with much animation. Great interactions on that big, white bus.

When I was 18, I became the director of the Y summer day camp that I had attended all my life. Every Friday I continued the tradition of taking the campers to Pisgah National Forest which was twenty minutes away. Sometimes we thought the bus would not make it up the steeps of those mountain roads, so we would stop singing and have the kids rock forward and back like a rowing team to help the bus get up the hill. That bus took us hiking, creek-stomping, camping and picnicking. It took us to the Cradle of Forestry, to the fish hatchery, to Looking Glass Falls, to the Pink Beds, to Sliding Glass Rock, to the Biltmore House and to many more out-of-the-way places for throwing rocks, footballs, frisbees and having fun. I loved that old bus.

And coming down the mountain was just as fun. That old bus would be straining its own governor as we would come downhill free-wheeling the mountain curves. Children would be sliding from sideto side in their naugahyde seats with grins on their faces as they tried to hold on. We would go as fast as we could – hindered only by the traffic in front of us – as we sang, “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes!”

Great days! All kids need a big, chunky, white camp bus in their childhood!

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