Living in a school bus

We are having a particularly cold spell of weather in Vermont. Temperatures are hovering around zero during the day and as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit at night. The home that my husband and I have built over the many years is so snug and cozy to come home to each evening that the weather doesn’t bother me at all.

It was not always that way. When first we met and began our life together, our dreams were grand but our pockets were empty. This giant of a man, to whom I have been married for more than 37 years, lived in a dear little house close to the river without heat or indoor plumbing. Together we would transform it into our first home.

First, we had to own it. We borrowed the purchase price of $5,000 from my father and the house with 3 acres of land bordering Sterling Brook was ours. Once a tenement building for the local saw mill and used only seasonally it was in need of a major renovation.

Just by chance, an old friend showed up at this time, driving a school bus that had seen better days. The proverbial light bulb went off and with just $50 passing hands, the school bus became permanently parked on our lawn. The term ‘lawn’ is used loosely since that lawn was buried under about 3 feet of snow. It was already April but little snow had melted from the long winter and so the emergency door in the back of the bus was level with the snow. Very convenient! This was to be our temporary home while we worked on the house.

Quickly, we ripped out the seats and set about furnishing the space. With windows on all sides, curtains were a priority. Next we dragged an old oriental rug out of the house to cover the floor. Where the seats had been, anchoring devices still remained stubbing our toes. Looking back, that rug was probably quite valuable although a corner had already been cut. Now we took shears to it and redesigned it, bus-shape. Next was the double bed complete with head and foot boards. It fit crossways with just enough room to squeeze around the end. A table and two chairs, a two burner hot plate and a bucket completed the interior design. We ran an electric cable from the house and had a telephone installed just inside the folding entrance door.

We had no heat but spring was coming and a large malamute/shepherd cross named Beau and two cats helped provide body heat once we all crawled into the rather inadequately-sized bed.

The bucket was our water container but also served as a thermometer. When ice had formed overnight, it was cold! The water came from the brook and had to be hauled several times a day for flushing the toilet in the shed, washing and cooking. It was frigid and just boiling it for coffee on the hot plate was a lengthy procedure. As spring moved into summer the passive solar heat from all the windows we had enjoyed in colder weather turned our capsule into a sauna. Now we could enjoy dipping in the brook to cool off.

All the while we were tearing the house apart. The interior walls made of lathe and plaster and some newspaper stuffed in for insulation had to be removed. The foundation was old stone, collapsing in places, and the sills were rotten. These all needed replacing and a small addition was added. The two of us worked together in the evenings and on weekends while working our regular jobs until late in November when we were able to move into two rooms of the house. Still we had the hotplate and by now an electric frying pan but best of all we had a working bathroom. We were on our way.

The yellow school bus had served us well and in time was passed on yet again. We continued to work on the house, room by room, until we had added a mother-in-law, a child and another on the way. It was time to move to bigger accommodations. We sold the house, purchased another property, close-by, with 30 acres and an existing farmhouse and started building our second home. Now some 32 years later, back to just the two of us, we are ready to move once more. The property is for sale and we are planning our third house to suit our senior years. Are we crazy? Maybe ……