Good morning church family,
I didn’t ride on the school bus until my freshman year in high school. When my family moved to rural Vermont from suburban Washington D.C., my days of walking to and from school were long gone. Some of my first impressions of the school bus centered on the remarkable amount of freedom the passengers enjoyed while on the ride. The buses didn’t have seat belts which afforded my fellow scholars ample opportunity to slide, slouch, crouch, and crawl. The high seat backs covered in thick, army-green vinyl provided excellent cover for all sorts of morally questionable behavior. The loud, diesel engine and the road noise coming in through the lowered windows in the bus’s clerestory, sufficiently muffled the sound of the suggestive, profane, and incriminating dialogue going on between students. Needless to say, except for a couple of unfortunate instances in which circumstances compelled me to venture to the back of the bus, I almost always sat in the first couple rows of seats.
Sitting up front provided an excellent opportunity for me to observe school bus drivers and their craft. The primary driver on my route was a small, wiry, woman with short, red hair, piercing blue eyes, and freckled, leathery skin that wrinkled at her neck and around her eyes. An earnest and serious person, Miss Darlene maintained a keen focus on her task. I don’t ever recall her smiling.
I enjoyed watching the way Miss Darlene shifted through the gears, routinely checked her mirrors, operated the arm that opened the folding door, manipulated the sun visor overhead, and clicked wipers and blinkers on and off. I was a particular student of the different nods and waves she’d give to other bus drivers, to police officers, and anyone who motioned “hello” to her. But there was something that Miss Darlene did on every bus ride that was of particular fascination to me. On each of the half-hour trips we took from Castleton to Fair Haven, the bus would come to a complete stop at every railroad crossing. She would put the motor in park; allowing the rumbling engine to idle to a mumble and then she’d look up into the big, fish-eye mirror hanging over the center aisle and fire off a stern: “Quiet!”. With the chattering suddenly muted, Miss Darlene would then open the quarterlight window on the driver’s side and draw in the large folding door on the passenger side. With tight, keen eyes and ears cocked, our faithful bus driver would look and listen down each side of the tracks, giving a full five-beat count to each survey. Abundantly satisfied that no train was coming, Miss Darlene would then close the door and window, put the bus back in gear, and cross the tracks.
I never asked Miss Darlene why she undertook such a precaution or kept such a careful protocol. Aside from the obligatory pleasantries offered upon one’s entry and exit from the bus, she never chatted with passengers. But when I related the ritual – which to me seemed unnecessary given the red, blinking crossing bells and gate arm that were in place at every crossing – my parents and other adults would assure me that school bus drivers were required by law to stop at railroad crossings to give a look and a listen. Flattering myself; I believed this law to have stemmed from the fact that school buses carried the most precious of cargo. Of course they’d use an abundance of caution when ferrying such august personages as Donnie Gregoire who wore the same Skid Row t-shirt for two weeks straight and Jennie Biscamp who liked to sit on boy’s laps and smack her gum while everyone squirmed.
But as it turned out, school bus drivers being required to stop at all railroad crossings was a federal law enacted after an awful accident that occurred in Utah in 1938. On a snowy, blowy first of December, Slim Silcox was driving a school bus full of students to the local high school. Coming to a railroad crossing, Silcox slowed down and strained to see down the tracks through the dense cloud of swirling flakes. Perceiving nothing, he accelerated through the crossing and an 82-car freight train t-boned the bus at full speed; dragging it a full half-mile before the train could come to a complete stop. Twenty-seven students and Silcox were killed – most of them, instantly. It was a gruesome and horrific accident that made the front pages of newspapers all over the country. Parents, citizens, and town officials all demanded that something be done to ensure that such an accident never happen again.
Looking back now, Miss Darlene’s daily stop on Route 4A in Castleton Corners was a solemn moment of silence kept to remember a past tragedy and to prevent a future one. All over the country this week, tens of thousands of school bus drivers stopped at railroad crossings and kept the quiet vigil. In most instances, the precaution exceeded the requirements of common sense but was honored nonetheless. While it may seem to many to be a waste of time and fuel, to anyone who lived in Sandy, Utah in December of 1938 – such stops represent the height of wisdom.
We Protestants have an aversion to religious ritual. We tend to chafe at anything appearing to impinge on our personal freedoms. We don’t like codes of conduct, rigid disciplines, and programs of accountability. We’d rather not spend our days involved in efforts to prevent sin but would prefer to occupy our hearts and minds in the pursuit of righteousness. And while I certainly share these sentiments and have spent my life striving to live a life that’s in holy agreement with God – I’m also very happy to sit for a bit at all the crossings. For instance, I’ve seen too many of my brothers unwisely dismiss calls to turn away from watching movies with steamy love scenes in them. “I’m no prude,” they’ll say. “I can handle a little artistic titillation.” But what would King David have to say on that matter? I’ve also known lots and lots of Christians who have decided to live out their faith without the benefit of church. “Who says I need to go to Sunday service every week in order to be a Christian?” they’ll argue. “Church is just a spiritualized club with a bunch of drama, expensive dues, and power-hungry pastors trying to control people’s lives. I think I’ll just worship God in my own way; thank you very much.” But what would the homesick exiles hanging up their harps in Babylon have to say to these proud and selfish believers? And who hasn’t listened to the weary grumbling of a fellow brother or sister who’s tired of hearing yet another appeal to maintain a time of personal devotion. “What good is gritting my teeth, buckling down, and doing my duty by reading the Bible every morning and going through some prayer list or something?” Well, what would the Gethsemane nappers prescribe or what would Cain, with blood on his hands and regret on his head, encourage? Wouldn’t a little discipline have gone a long way for them?
I could cite many more examples of Christian rituals like these that tend get a bad rap but which can actually be quite redemptive. Robert Frost once said, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” That’s a fine bit of New England wisdom that we modern believers would do well to take to heart in regard to the standards of the Christian faith. Be careful not to too quickly dismiss the disciplines of the past as stuffy, stodgy old orthodoxy until you soberly assess why it was our forebears first put them into practice. And who knows? Your stopping at a crossing may just save your life.
We’re looking forward to getting together tomorrow morning. There’ll be so much for each of us to share with each other and with the Lord. It’ll be so good to throw our heads back and sing out loud, to sit down and apply our minds to a passage of Scripture, and then to stand back up with an earnest desire to go out and live a fuller life for Christ! I can’t wait. May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!
- Pastor Tate
