When I drive my children to school in the morning this semester, I always encounter a school bus from an unknown school that rides with us for a short distance. It is probably a new one and I have never seen it before. This car looks a bit like an RV. The yellow color is just like the ones often seen in American movies. There are also a few big words written on the rear window of the car: "Pay attention to parking when the sign is stretched out." Remember the United States The school bus in the film also has a big red sign that says STOP. It's just that our school buses are not as spacious as those in American movies, and they don't look as realistic.
Most of the private schools equipped with this kind of imitation American school buses are private schools. If you pay a lot for school, you will naturally be provided with corresponding services. I’m not sure whether public primary and secondary schools are equipped with school buses. Anyway, I’ve never heard of them. Nowadays, except for a small number of able-bodied students in Tianchao primary and junior high schools who can go to school on their own, their parents either take a taxi to escort them to school, or they go to a group of people who live nearby to carpool to school, which makes parents and children very miserable.
This reminds me of the fact that when I was in elementary school and middle school, there were school buses, and parents didn’t worry about taking their children to and from school at all. It's just that the school bus we take is not a school bus, but one driven by each unit. But I think any bus that carries students to and from school in a "double-regulation" manner - at a specified time and at a specified place - can also be called a school bus. This form of so-called school bus is obviously an exaggeration to describe it as unprecedented, but it was indeed a special existence with a very socialist flavor and characteristics. It is estimated that it can still be used like this in North Korea.
It probably started when I was in the fourth or fifth grade of elementary school. Due to the spring breeze of reform, everything in China was new, and people's lives gradually improved. I don’t know who started it, but in Fuling City, the trend of each unit using its own car to transport its children to and from school gradually emerged. At that time, there was no such thing as commercial housing, and workers’ housing was basically built by each unit, so everyone’s work, home, and life were concentrated in one hospital. Fuling City was not big, and the main primary and secondary schools were connected by one road. The routes can be almost connected in series, so it is more convenient to pick up and drop off at the same time.
Before the opening of school buses, there were no decent city buses in Fuling, and the terrain made it impossible to ride a bicycle. We all walked to school. It gets late in the winter morning, and the first people to appear on the dark road are primary and secondary school students going to school. Everyone carries their schoolbags and walks silently and quickly under the dim orange street lights. Few people speak, and there is silence everywhere. There was only the sound of the soles of shoes scraping against the ground. At that time, a radio speaker was hung near the top of every street lamp or telephone pole on the street. The first program every morning was to play the song-"In the Field of Hope." First, there was a crackling sound of electricity from the speakers hanging in the air, and then brisk music flowed out, floating on the streets and in every corner, awakening this silent town. We rushed to school in the darkness before dawn, accompanied by this hopeful music. Well, in retrospect, this PMM (this is also a sensitive time!) singing voice has indeed been heard since childhood.
The Fuling Science and Technology Commission, where my family is located, has a small number of employees. In addition to the subordinate Science and Technology Information Office, there are only about a dozen children in the courtyard who attend elementary school to high school. Since other units began to use buses to transport students to and from school, the Science and Technology Committee felt that it could not fall behind and began to plan and think about this matter. After all, no matter how poor we are, we cannot afford education, and no matter how miserable we are, we cannot suffer for our children.
However, the vehicle conditions of the Science and Technology Commission at that time were limited. I remember that there was only a blue-gray Volga car produced in the Soviet Union, a Beijing 212 jeep, and a Beijing 130 small car with a big head painted in dark green. truck. It is unrealistic to carry so many children in cars and jeeps, so what should we do? Let’s just use trucks to transport them. This is really a bold decision, which fully embodies the spirit of the times of "If there are conditions, go up, and if there are no conditions, you will go up if conditions are created"!
The driver’s seat of that Beijing 130 has two rows of seats, and the driver can probably seat up to six or seven people. What will happen to the remaining children? I climbed up through the ladder to the open carriage at the back, which was originally used for pulling cargo. There were two rows of wooden hard seats under the fences on both sides of the carriage. If it's full, it's standing room only. This was of course a very dangerous method. At that time, only on trucks carrying criminals on parade after public trials and sentencing meetings could one see so many people standing on top of the truck.
It's just that they were tied up with big flowers, and there were armed police soldiers "supporting" them from behind, while we were leaning on the railing alone, with our faces facing the wind. As soon as the car drove away, the torn red scarf on his chest was blown up by the wind and swept across his neck, making it itch.
The imagined danger soon became a reality. One time, a high school girl who was older than us, pretty but always had a serious expression, was climbing halfway into the rear compartment when the car started suddenly... This girl made a mistake. , "Ah yo yo!" He screamed and fell heavily to the ground. When the people standing on the car saw it, they quickly slapped the iron sheet of the driving building in front to stop the car. Everyone got out of the car to check the injury. Fortunately, people's leathers at that time were generally durable, and luckily she didn't hit the back of her head dangerously. It seemed like it was just a fall, and there was nothing serious. It was just that her beautiful black fitness pants were scratched when she fell on the ground. Suffered some flesh wounds. Everyone quickly helped the young lady, who could only rely on one leg to support her body while jumping forward, to take her seat in the driving building and escort her home. Since then, this young lady has almost never taken a ride in the car. The young lady later got admitted to a good university, and later married in South Korea, but this fall is probably a memory she will never forget.
Probably for this reason, not long after the two Beijing 130 trucks got into the accident, the company bought a new car to use as a school bus. This is a Huaxi brand minibus with about 20 seats. It has a slender body and is painted with blue horizontal stripes on a white background. I remember clearly the logo in the middle of the front face of the car. It was an upright golden ginkgo leaf, with two letters H and X on both sides of the bottom petiole. There are two small traditional Chinese characters for "Huaxi" at the bottom of the windshield. This car basically accompanied me from the fourth grade of elementary school to the entire high school period. To me, it is really a hard-working old man with great achievements. Of course, we should also be grateful to the driver who has been helping us drive - Driver He. During the summer vacation of the first year after I bought this car, I took the children from my work unit to visit the ghost town Fengdu in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. That trip was not very recent, the county roads were bumpy and bumpy, and I was always prone to motion sickness at that time. I couldn't hold it back and vomited, and the contents of my stomach radiated out in a fan-shaped pattern onto the brand new paint surface of the car. , extremely eye-catching. Fortunately, we took a boat on the return trip, which was much easier and we didn't suffer any trouble.
Although the location of each unit in the city is different, because the city is small and there are only a few major schools, the stops at these school buses are basically the same. The school bus from the Science and Technology Commission will stop at six stops along the way after departing from the unit.
The first stop is Gaosuntang, which is actually a little bit below the Science and Technology Commission. However, due to the 3D terrain of the mountain city, the car needs to take a U-shaped route to get there after driving out. This is not a fixed stop. It is mainly for picking up some children who live outside the Science and Technology Commission and will stop at a wave;
After passing Gaosuntang, it is all the way downhill to the second stop: Yijiaba , the nearby schools are mainly Fujiu Middle School and No. 14 Middle School. Before transferring from No.9 Middle School to No.5 Middle School, I worked here for a year;
After Yijiaba, I went all the way downhill to the third stop: Nanmen Mountain. The main people who got off here were For children from City Six School, this station is basically right in front of the school, which is very convenient. The children of our school bus drivers go to school here;
It is a flat road from Nanmen Mountain to the fourth station Jiangyuan Factory. The people working in Jiangyuan Factory are mainly children from City No. 7 School, including me when I was in elementary school. After getting off the bus here, I had to climb an almost vertical zigzag staircase, then walk through a deep and hidden alley, and then climb 66 steps with a gentle slope to reach the school;
After Jiangyuan Factory Continue on a flat road to the fifth stop: Caijiapo, which is the site of the 15th Middle School. Caijiapo, as its name suggests, is a huge slope road. Go all the way down the slope to the sixth stop, which is also the terminal stop of the school bus: Fuling No. 5 Middle School. I basically got on and off at this station throughout my middle school years.
In the morning, the school bus departs from the garage door on the ground floor of the Science and Technology Commission Office Building. The garage is right behind my building, separated only by a small dam. My house is on the fourth floor, and I can clearly see the situation there from the back balcony window. At the beginning, because of the novelty, we went to the garage door early and waited for the school bus driver from our unit—Driver He, who has big eyes as bright as lights and a hooked nose—to open the rolling shutter door of the garage.
The thin driver He likes to wear a light gray suit jacket. His legs are very slender, but he always seems to be walking at a duck pace, with his body swaying slightly to both sides.
His silver car keys hung on the belt at his waist, sparkling and jingling. When it's foggy in winter, we can already hear him taking the key while people can't see clearly in the fog. By the way, I always felt that Driver He reached back and quickly lifted the corner of his suit and took the keys from his waist in a very cool and elegant manner, which was no different from the way Sirs draw their guns in Hong Kong police movies.
As soon as the door opened, we quickly got on the bus and grabbed our fixed seats. My fixed seat was in the last row by the left window. I chose to sit there not because I was afraid of bumping, but because the beautiful girl I liked in elementary school who came back from Xinjiang, wore braids, spoke Mandarin and could play the electronic keyboard, had a fixed position in the second to last row, which was me. The front of the seat. I remember that in "Forrest Gump", Jenny yelled "RUN!" to Forrest Gump, and the scene left in my memory was that my little goddess stretched her hand out of the car window and smiled at me with an exaggerated sign of "GUN" !”, which means raising the middle finger. Ha ha. Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know in advance what your piece will taste like. But if you knew it early, it would be boring.
When I was in the first grade of junior high school, the beautiful girl sitting in front of me left Fuling with her parents and went to the provincial capital Chengdu. So there is no motivation to grab a fixed seat. Sometimes I sit in the passenger seat, where I have a good view. I can also watch how Driver He drives, study how he shifts gears and picks them up, and how his long legs in straight trousers flip the clutch and accelerator. Braked. Driver He often threw a dark red rag over and asked me to help him wipe off the moisture on the front windshield. In winter, this is a job I often do and am very willing to do. I always feel that this kind of operation is necessary. He appears to be mature, sensible, and chic.
Later, the excitement of taking the school bus gradually disappeared, and I was no longer so active in waiting at the garage door early. I would often wait until I heard the clattering sound made by Driver He when he opened the garage rolling shutter door. Starting from home - I guess my procrastination was probably developed at that time, and I would never act until the last minute - if I move quickly, I can intercept the school bus before it leaves the gate of the Science and Technology Commission. Even if it's a step too late and I can't catch it, it doesn't matter. I can go down to Gaosuntang Station and wait for it. As mentioned before, this station is actually not far away. Just because of the slope of the terrain, cars need to take a U-shaped bend along the road to reach it, but people can run directly down the ladder trail on the slope. of. The physical education teacher will not deceive me. The straight line between two points is really the closest, because even if the car is running faster than me, usually when I arrive, the car is still far away.
In the car, there are students of all ages from high school to elementary school. In fact, there are not many people who speak the same language. Apart from sitting in front and studying how the driver drives, everyone usually just watches. Street view or doing something boring. One of the more boring things I did was to encounter the domestic microclimate in spring and summer when I was about to graduate from elementary school. Although I almost didn’t understand the reason, I tried my best to join in the fun. Many of our classmates followed the same pattern. When we were in school, we used picture books to cut out a lot of small rectangular strips of paper, and then wrote some popular words and phrases at that time, and then the production was completed. Finally, we filled a pocket full of it - I remember that I couldn't even remember it at that time. The windows of the classroom are all covered with such pieces of paper. From a distance, they look like the money hanging on the windows during the Spring Festival in the north. The strange thing is that the teacher didn't seem to be furious about it - and then when I was riding home from school at noon, I threw these pieces of paper out of the car window... Now think about it, apart from seriously damaging the environmental sanitation, People who don't understand may think it's a hearse when they see the pieces of paper flying out of the car like snowflakes - which completely fails to achieve the desired effect. This paragraph may be a little unclear and confusing, but it seems that it can only be like this at the moment, so be it.
Although Fuling City is small, there are quite a few companies that operate school buses. In addition, the time is concentrated, so at the most important station - Fuling No. 5 Middle School, which is the entrance of my middle school, I often go to and from school. There will be crowds of school buses. For a time, all kinds of school buses were like a car show, all kinds of big and small, very lively. One by one, they drove down the high Caijia Slope, picked up the students waiting on the roadside according to their respective "double rules" at the bottom of the slope, and then walked around the small street turntable at the entrance of the Fifth Middle School, and again Climb up Caijiapo on the way back and start your return journey.
In addition to the Science and Technology Commission, these vehicles also come from the Institute of Education, the Agricultural Machinery School, the Hailing Factory, the Tobacco Factory, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Hospital, the Labor Bureau, the Environmental Protection Bureau, From the Institute of Electronics... we can also see the different situations of each unit: the most beautiful and high-end one is undoubtedly the brand new white-on-red-striped, elongated and taller bus from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. It is tall and powerful, with shiny wheels. , the momentum is extraordinary, and the students sitting on it are condescending and arrogant to all living beings, as if they are sitting on a moving cash box. This feeling is certainly not found in our Huaxi minibuses. At the same time, there are also some older buses, such as the school buses of the Education College and the Hailing Factory. Although they are also large buses, they are dilapidated and even the outer iron sheets are rusted. It takes a lot of effort and effort to climb up Caijiapo from No. 5 Middle School. You can't get up until there's black smoke coming out from behind your butt. There are also some units that have too few people and use small cars. For example, the school bus of the Labor Bureau seems to be a black Jetta. Speaking of the Labor Bureau car, I remembered another thing: My junior high school English teacher, Ms. Jiang, was the wife of the Labor Director. Once, I was late after class at noon and couldn’t catch the car back. Ms. Jiang warmly invited me to ride in their car. Mrs. Jiang I was relatively fat, and the car was too small. There were several classmates from the Labor Bureau sitting in the same row, so it was extremely crowded. I was really squeezed that time. The person sitting next to me was Teacher Jiang, and I was embarrassed. Push it out as hard as you can and hold it there. Along the way, I really experienced the feeling of those canned sardines that people often say, and I will never forget it.
When the car picks people up at school, they usually don’t wait for people. People wait for the car. When the car comes, people get on it and then drive away. After all, no one knows which classmate will not come because of something. sit. Well, in fact, the most common reason is that when the bell rang in the last class, the teacher said kindly: "Then I will talk for two more minutes...". The consequence of this is that even if you run to the station as hard as you can after class, you can often only pant and open your mouth, watching helplessly as the car's back disappears mercilessly on Caijia Slope. My school is on the edge of the Yangtze River at the foot of the mountain, and my home is on the edge of the city, which is close to the top of the mountain. To walk back means climbing up the mountain and through the entire city. If you can't take a car, it will be very difficult to walk. At this time, I often feel a sense of loss that I have been abandoned by the army.
If you don’t want to walk back, you can find a way to catch a bus from another unit that arrives later. Of course, later there was a private minivan called a "circulator" that you could ride on. This kind of car gets its name because it runs a fixed route in a circle. The color of the bus is also similar to the "noodle" ones in the north, Huang Sang Sang's. The fare is two yuan per person, and it is two yuan no matter where you sit. This kind of car is usually equipped with a few dirty little pandas or plastic stools in order to make full use of all the space and seat a few more people in various directions. This little bun can probably fit a dozen students if it's full. When the car is full, the conductor can often only open his arms and hold on to the chairs in front and behind him, bend down and support his head on the roof of the car, press his back and buttocks against the sliding door window, and just half-squat and half-squat with open arms. He stood trying to maintain balance, with his head tilted to one side, like Spider-Man and the suffering Christ.
As for whether you can get on a school bus from another company, it mainly depends on the expressions of the drivers. Some drivers are very strict, such as the driver from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. He has eyes as sharp as an eagle. Students from other units are not allowed to come in. Those who want to be clever and get through are not even allowed to get through. However, some teachers are more open-minded. As long as you get on the bus without making any noise, they will just turn a blind eye and pretend not to see it, like an owl, or they may tell you when a classmate who is riding in that bus takes you to ride on the bus. Once you say hello, he will nod in acquiescence. At that time, I used the bus from the Agricultural Mechanical School more often, because my best friend took this bus, and he could take me up, and then get off at Gaosuntang Station.
Later, the driver of the ICBC school bus was changed and monitoring was relaxed. I also used it a few times. There were a lot of people in the bus and it was overcrowded, so I didn’t get a high-end feeling. Moreover, their bus didn’t have Gaosuntang Station, so we had to sit at the terminal station which was a hill higher than us and then walk down, which was very troublesome. Haha, this is really a bit like eating steamed buns for nothing and feeling shameless, and taking a car for nothing and feeling too far away. People are always dissatisfied.
This form of school bus existed during the period from elementary school to high school. Later, with the development of commercial housing and people living dispersedly, this type of school bus disappeared.
From this point of view, I am relatively lucky, it has always been there when I needed it. It can also be said that it is a specific product of a special period of transition from the so-called planned economy to a market economy, and it may only be found in medium-sized cities like Fuling - cities that are too large or too small are probably limited by objective conditions. It was difficult to drive - after a few years of short-lived existence, such school buses slowly disappeared, and the pieces of paper I threw away became the forgotten scenery on the roadside of the new Long March, gone with the wind. But sometimes I think about it, isn’t this intermediate state of having both good and bad?