Mrs. Slaughter made a big difference on a big yellow bus

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

At the end of the day, we were either walkers or bus riders. That was in the paleolithic age, before precious family gasoline was spent for school transportation, spawning the arrival of a third category: the “pick-ups.” 
I was a bus rider. My parents picked me up from Martinsville Elementary School a handful of times. Otherwise, I had to spend a couple extra hours each weekday commuting on a big, yellow Bluebird bus.
I’d wait at the end of my driveway until the bus doors would swing open, the heat would blow in my face, and I’d inhale the familiar yet nauseating smell of pleather seats and rubber aisleways, sometimes mingled with that strange sawdust that covers vomit — a nasty side effect of mixing children, motion, and diesel fumes.
I was also part of that unlucky passenger category of being first on, last off. My ride each morning started extra early, and my ride each afternoon ...

often ended with me and my nearby neighbors finally arriving home, drowsy and disoriented.
None of it sounds pleasant, but oddly enough, watching my daughter now ride a bus to school (she’s one of the first on, one of the first off — thank you, common sense) is a daily blast of nostalgia.
Much of that has to do with Mrs. Slaughter, my favorite school bus driver. When I read that Fannie Jane Slaughter died Feb. 7 in Wilmington at the age of 85, I immediately remembered her kindness and felt gratitude for her safe driving skills. 
If you believe teachers are unsung heroes, please consider the even-more thankless job of school bus driver when you’re nominating someone for an education medal. 
From 2001–2010, there were 262,839 fatal motor-vehicle crashes in the United States, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Of those, 0.36 percent were classified as school transportation-related. And of those deaths, most were occupants of other vehicles involved; only 7 percent of that fraction were occupants of school-transportation vehicles.
Riding a school bus is about seven times safer than riding in a passenger vehicle, according to Consumer Reports. You’d never know that by the throngs of parents who pick up their kids at schools these days.
Mrs. Slaughter was kind and huggable, offering a smiling face when we grade-schoolers stepped up into her bus. But she was no pushover. She made use of the magical mirror that allowed her to see all the way into the back seat — home of hoodlums and wannabe hoodlums — and she would bring the bus to a full stop if the kids were getting out of line.
She also would occasionally bring the bus to a stop at a bait-and-tackle shop near Cowan Lake. The whole scene is totally implausible today, but back in the mid-1970s, our bus would park, and we bus riders would be allowed to leave the bus, walk into the store, buy candy at the store and bring it back on the bus to eat. 
My fellow bus riders and I could not imagine a more extraordinary act of benevolence. Mrs. Slaughter was our Willy Wonka.
It didn’t happen often, and I don’t know when or why it stopped, but I can tell you that nearly every time we made a candy stop at Cowan Lake, I bought Fun Dip, which consisted of three packets of flavored and colored sugar that included two edible “Lik-A-Stix.” The “stix” were meant to be moistened with one’s own saliva in order to collect sugar to transfer to one’s mouth. After all the sugar had been mainlined, the sugar-transfer devices could also be eaten — oh, sweet bonus. 
Imagine a child today shoving not one, but two sticks into her mouth for a 45-minute bumpy bus ride. There likely would be a formal investigation. Of course, my experience was during the pre-car-seat days, so on long family vacations I slept on the floorboard, untethered to anything resembling a seat belt. 
I ain’t sayin’ it’s right. But I am saying that transportation sure was more comfortable back then. 
It was so comfortable that one afternoon I woke up to Mrs. Slaughter gently shaking me. I had fallen fully asleep on the bus, and she had found me after she parked the bus at her house, diligently checking each seat before her job was officially done for the day.
I was embarrassed, but she wasn’t at all angry with me. She just started up the bus again and drove me home.
Last one off.