My Yellow School Bus

So I bought a little school bus (it was yellow) and I started driving it around Yellowstone National Park. I spent the summer mostly thinking about getting a job and smoking weed, and eventually it was late September and I figured I ought to drive south. There was this girl I knew in Prescott who I knew would smoke me out, and I thought maybe if I was in town I would get a chance to grow on her, so I parked my school bus early one Saturday morning in the parking lot of Hastings Entertainment Superstore. I had a little hot plate and a stack of wheat bread and tofu salami, so I sat around and cooked sandwiches while I was waiting for the store to open where she worked.

The reason I was able to buy this school bus was because the summer before my old man had died from a brain cancer called glioblastoma and left me $20,000 in a savings account. I was driving around because I didn’t see the point of much of anything and I didn’t want to see or talk to my family, and I didn’t want to talk about my family and I still don’t. The reason I became a vegetarian was because this Indian guru named His Holy Holiness Ravi Shankar said it was a good way to avoid cancer, which I want to avoid almost as bad as I want to avoid my family nowadays. It used to be that I had to drive my school bus around towns that had a good public library with good internet connection, but nowadays my guru doesn’t answer my emails so I don’t worry too much about the internet.

By the time the superstore finally opened I had eaten all but one slice of my tofu salami and all but the heels of my loaf of wheat bread. Driving around Wyoming one time I threw out half a sandwich to a black bear cub that I saw on the side of the road. In Prescott I figured I probably wouldn’t see any bears although I have seen wild boars roaming around the city streets. Not so much in the part of town where the Hastings is. I figured I’d keep the heels just in case of an emergency. I walked into the store and asked for Sasha, because that was this girl’s name. The manager, who was going over some gently used compact discs, told me Sasha wasn’t scheduled today and would I like her to tell her I stopped by. It occurred to me in that instant that I was sort of trying to ambush her and I felt a little bit guilty for that, so I just said no thanks and walked off to rummage around the bargain bins and drink free coffee.

In the bottom of the bargain bin I actually found something pretty cool. It was a little black notebook, one of those really classy ones that cost a fortune. I figured someone probably put it there by mistake, like maybe they were going to steal it but chickened out or decided to steal a different colored one instead. I always figured if I was going to write a book about driving around in my school bus I would start by scribbling notes in one of those classy little black notebooks, and since someone had already done the heavy lifting (so to speak) and put a fake bargain bin sticker on it, I figured it was probably a sign. I walked back up to the manager at the register with this sexy little black notebook under my arm trying not to look nervous and handed it to her, thinking maybe it was a dumb idea to try this with a manager when I could have probably done it with some minimum wage employee much easier. She made some comment about how these things never go on sale and it was probably the wrong price, but what the heck. It was actually pretty cool of her.

After that, I figured I would drive up to Thumb Butte, which is a cool little hiking area, and maybe eat the rest of my salami and bread if I got hungry after walking around for a bit. I decided maybe I shouldn’t bother Sasha and I could just hang around for a while and maybe see if I run into her more organically, maybe see if anyone else was in town who might remember me from the last time I was here a couple of years earlier. Going up to the Butte reminded me of my friend Hiram, because one time we took shrooms up there and I got sick and threw up in the snow. Anyways, halfway up the Butte I see a bunch of people standing around pointing at something. I pulled my school bus over and no joke, there were a couple of little black bears climbing up a ponderosa pine. I thought about throwing them my last sandwich, but I figured the tourists would get on my case about it so I got back in my school bus and drove up to the trailhead. Once I got there I figured ‘screw it’ and I hiked back down the switchback, but by the time I got back the tourists and the bears were gone and all I saw was a pack of wild boars rummaging in the brush.