How I Lived in a Bus
My name is Brian and Bob asked me to write a piece about a rig I lived in
once.
My fascination with all things with the infernal combustion engine goes
back to my childhood and the first Whizzer motorbike I saw. I never got
one but I have had a bunch of motors. In fact I made my living as a
mechanic for a number of years, drove long haul truck, lived in a variety of
vehicles and have owned many motorcycles. That all seems to help balance
never getting a Whizzer.
What Bob wanted me to write about however took place in 1981 as I was
trying to get my life in order after many years of drug and alcohol abuse.
I was getting sober and had a great job in a beautiful National Park in
Alaska as a mechanic.
I had been heading downhill fast after returning from Vietnam and
drinking and drugging through the sixties and seventies , burning bridges
and marriages, losing jobs and hurting those I loved. Now the world was
new to me, I saw it through clear eyes and in my attempt to get things
together I was offered an old bus for $500. It became a special bus to
me. The owner and her 16 year old son had bought it and fixed it up some
for camping. When the woman was a year sober, her son was killed in
front of her in a car accident and as devastating as that was, she
remained sober. That made a great impression on me as I had two young
sons and worried about something happening to them and whether that
would make me drink again. She gave me huge hope.
The bus was a wreck. It had been sitting for several years in the Alaskan
bush and nearly every window was broken. Kids had been partying in it
and leaving their trash. It had been shot at and had several bullet holes
just below the windshield . The saving grace is that she had a rebuilt
engine installed shortly before it was parked and abandoned. The other
saving grace is that she would take a hundred dollars a payday until it was
paid for and I did have child support to pay. I could see the finished bus in
my minds eye and it was great. It was a 1959 GMC ¾ length full adult
height ex-Air Force bus and absolutely perfect for me.
The amazing thing is that when I brought a battery and some gas and
tinkered a bit it started right up. I first drove to the dump, shoveled out
all the junk and trash the partiers had left and stripped it pretty much
clean. Then on to a work-mates house where I could work on it and had
some help with the heavier stuff. I finished stripping the inside and
carefully covered the windows I didn’t need with plywood and sheet
metal. There were a couple still intact so they went in the spots I wanted
windows and I measured for windshield glass and made cardboard
templates for the oddly shaped rear windows. I was able to find some
salvage glass and got a deal on some other tinted glass the glass shop had.
The first incarnation of “Eekabus” had a plywood bed with a salvaged
foam mattress, a salvaged kitchen table for a kitchen counter, two bench
bus seats facing each other with a handmade table between, an icebox
salvaged from an old junk trailer, an antique gas hotplate converted to
propane and that's about it. I built a wood heat stove out of an old 5
gallon barrel. I built a Dutch door for the entry. I had a lot of mechanical
stuff to do, tires to find, painting done by brush and roller and general
odds and ends but the great thing is it gave me something to do when I
wasn’t working and kept my mind off “me”.
I don’t think I had ever been so delighted with life. “Eekabus” was
perfect. My expenses were minimal. Registration, insurance, gas , food
and tobacco…oh yeah and child support. I loved the feeling of having my
home with me. It was very much like I felt when I backpacked. I was
able to add stuff as I could afford it…Alpine stereo with ADS speakers
came along. A bumper sticker that said, “Don’t laugh, your daughter might
be in here”. I would park in some pullout overlooking the Nenana River,
make a cup of good coffee and kick back in my salvaged oak office chair
and dig the view and soak in the peace. What a simple life
That first summer I parked it in the gravel parking lot up by the dog
kennels in Denali Park headquarters area. The next summer I drove it out
to the road camp I worked in and used a gravel travel trailer pad to park
on. There I had power and water. I built a pair of nice bunkbeds for my
two sons when they came for the summer. It was an art project in
progress. It kept ‘becoming’, much like I was.
The bus went through another complete renovation with real butcher
block counter and cabinets, an apartment size gas stove with oven, a
jewelers bench, and many more conveniences and extras. The one thing
that held true through it all is that the spirit of the dead teenager was
with us always. He had a great sense of humor and would hide things once
in a while, move things some times but always with a feeling of approval
and joy.
Eekabus made several trips down to Haines, AK where my sons lived with
their mom and it would wait there for me while I traveled for the winter.
I also drove it down the Alcan to Oregon and back one winter. That was a
great adventure and I was able to help a woman who was traveling alone
by using the CB radio as we traveled through whiteout conditions.
I remarried and we lived in the bus the first winter near Denali Park .
That is another story. We moved to the Kenai Peninsula and bought land
where Eekabus became a guest house and I began the ultimate renovation
with blown in urethane insulation and knotty pine tongue and groove ceiling
but I got sidetracked and motorcycles got in the way.
We sold the land eventually with Eekabus included and moved on to the
lower 48. The good news is that we now have another bus, a 1963 Dodge
shorty with the same 6’ 2” interior that is in the beginnings of a conversion.
More will be revealed.
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