School Bus Hotel

 

I remember I was about 18 years old, hitchhiking, and found myself in this tiny little town in northern Missouri, where it was the home base for a traveling county fair/carnival that I came to know of the summer before, but that's another story. So, I came to this town looking to get hired by the carnival and travel with them for the summer. I needed a place to sleep for the night and I'm walking down this street downtown. There's a line of little kids waiting to get into the movie theater. I asked one of the kids if there is a motel in town or someplace I can sleep. He said no but I could sleep in their clubhouse which was an old, converted school bus. One of them broke away from the line and led me to old, converted he showed me this his old school bus in the back yard. He assured me his parents wouldn't mind me sleeping there. A couple hours later the kid and several of his friends came back from the movie and thought I might be hungry for something to eat. They all chipped in and got me popcorn, a candy bar, and a cup of soda pop. I'm thinking that's pretty cool of these kids to do this. And their dad comes out a little bit later and kind of checks with me and says his kids told him some guy is sleeping out here and just wanted to see what's going on. I explained to him that I hitchhiked here, and I was going to go to work for the carnival the next day and there's no other place to sleep. He said it's cool. So, I slept there and got up the next morning and changed my mind. Turned around and hitchhiked home again.