A Converted School Bus for Mr. C – A 1959 International B And Other Family Memories

 

My wife’s dad Dermot was a funny guy who left us too young. He was a single dad in the ’70s with four girls to raise on a teacher’s salary. He was a long-distance runner and a basketball coach. He taught shop class and practiced TM. Though he’s been gone now for two decades, “Mr. C” fit a lot of living into his 70 years.

 

 

At the end of the ’60s, Dermot, who was newly divorced, decided to “let his crew cut down.” In addition to writing his master’s thesis on the effects of LSD in psychotherapy, Derm had no doubt read Tom Wolfe’s pop opus “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” The book chronicled the outlandish exploits of the Merry Pranksters, who rode around in a converted school bus called “Further.” Suddenly the time was right to go with the flow. With Kesey’s bus lodged in the collective consciousness, Derm started looking for one of his own.

 

 

Early in 1970, Dermot bought a 1959 International B-Series school bus. Unfortunately, the sheet metal worker he got it from had already pop-riveted the interior to within an inch of its life. The great beast rattled so much it sounded like a tortured tin can going down the road. So, Dermot set about converting the conversion. To remedy the noise factor and warm things up a bit, he replaced most of the sheet metal with plywood bunks and cabinets. He got some banana boxes for storage, and stocked the pantry with Roman Meal bread and peanut butter. In a nod to the Pranksters, Derm installed an 8-Track sound system for blasting Santana, the Fifth Dimension, and Frank Sinatra. “Chicago, Chicago, that toddling town!”

 

 

Dermot was a high school shop teacher, so the International was his playground. The only job he left for someone else was the exterior paint and striping. My wife, Kim, and her sisters all have happy memories of camping in the bus, from the San Juan Islands, to Vancouver, B.C. and south to Modesto, Calif. So, sit back and enjoy some cool cars and funny family connections.

 

 

When Kim and I first got together in high school, we discovered that our families already had some close bonds. One night in the ’70s, as Kim and I were flipping through one of her family albums, we were both shocked to find a picture of me as an infant in Hawaii, sitting on her Grandpa George’s lap. I laughingly told my mom about it later and she said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Kim’s grandma Tricia and I once worked in the same building in Bellingham and were best friends in Hawaii.” So, Dermot’s mother Patricia was the one holding me in all those old baby photos! Turns out that Kim’s “Grandpa George” and “Grandma Tricia” were my main babysitters during the Hawaii years, from about 1961-1965. On top of that, my mom and Kim’s dad were classmates at Bellingham High School.

 

 

Dermot served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War and went to college on the GI Bill. In 1959 he was enrolled at Western Washington College of Education, where he starred on the men’s basketball team. Sometime that spring, Dermot and a couple of roommates from Gladstone St. purchased a very unusual car. I’d seen the picture before and always thought maybe it was a postwar Studebaker? No. On the back of the Kodacolor print, Patricia wrote in faint pencil “47 Frazer – all three boys bought for $50. Hat from Bavaria. Sweater is Sally’s.” Sally was and is Kim’s mom, who went to the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, Calif. with the girl who ended up writing “Mommie Dearest.” Others in the snob hatchery were Maureen Reagan and Liza Minnelli.

 

 

Come the summer of 1959, Dermot was a crewmember (and the cook) on a purse seine boat out of Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham. Here he is on the boat’s top house, with his cuffed jeans and crew cut. He also worked as a cook at various salmon canneries in Southeast Alaska. As a result, he was a master maker of all things pancake.

 

 

A nice look at the purse seiner and skiff, getting ready for the salmon fishing season, either in Puget Sound or “Southeast.” This sturdy wooden work boat was probably built in the Pacific Northwest in the late teens or twenties.

 

 

Jumping ahead a few years to circa 1968, here is Grandpa George, recently back in Bellingham after 10 years stationed in Hawaii. To his left are three of Derm’s girls: Brook, Kim, and Mary. Peeking out from behind is a 1960 Ford Falcon, in all its frugal glory. As a retired Navy man, this is the car George would drive to the PX (at Whidbey Naval Air Station, in Oak Harbor). As a kid, I had been to George and Patricia’s house several times before I ever met my future wife, Kim.

 

 

A few years after the bus was converted, Derm’s four girls were captured in all their polyester glory. The mustard color of the car matches the jacket of young Dana, and plays well off the brown jumper Mary’s wearing. Brook has double duty with a football and the dog, Pinkerton. My Kim is standing tall in her patriotic plaid pants and red mock turtle. Most of the fashions were straight from the school’s lost and found, according to a reliable source. If anyone can ID the car, please do; it would help solve a decades-long mystery.

 

 

The closest Kim and I ever came to having a hippie bus was our 1982 Ford F100 with “sleeping” canopy. In 2000 we husked it south from Bellingham, Wash. to Santa Barbara via Interstate 5, then back to Washington state on Coastal Highway 1 (and 101).

 

 

The best stop along the way was the Big Sur Campground, with its deep shade and great swimming hole. Would love to do it again someday, in a converted school bus that’s actually nice enough to sleep in.