THE CONTINUING STORY OF SKOOLY PETE & FURTHUR2

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Home? Who needs a stinkin' home?
OK, sure, Keith and Danny and Shirley Jones had one, but who the hell remembers anything about their freakin' home, huh? Admit it: when you recall the Partridge Family TV show, the first thing that comes to your mind (other than the whole Susan Dey in mini-skirt thing) was the bus. The freakin' bus.
It was cool. No. It was DAMN cool. I remember coming home from school circa 1972 and asking my parents if I could paint their 1964 Rambler wagon to look like the Partridge Family bus.
BEFORE MY PAINT JOB:

AFTER MY PAINT JOB (ARTIST'S RENDERING):

I am convinced that, had my parents responded encouragingly to my idea, I'd be a famous President or televangelist today. Instead, my parents met my suggestion with the icy stares of crushed hope. Sucked of all creativity and youthful spark, I ended up in Buffalo, New York. 'Nuf said.

But this blog is not about the bad, horrible, regretable things that I did to small animals. It is about freedom and joy. And, above all, it is about school buses.

More specifically, it is about my buddy Pete, and his soon to be acquired bus that I have dubbed Furthur2. In so naming it, I pay homage to Furthur1, the 1939 International Harvester school bus that Ken Kesey bought in 1964, painted, and then used for tooling around the country so that he could distribute acid to the Great Unwashed.

(Above, that's a picture of Furthur after it was pulled from a swamp in November, 2005.)

My general plan for the blog is this: I am going to document each significant step in Pete's school bus acquisition and bus conversion process. When he makes his bus selection, I will report here how much he paid, what he chose and why. If Pete decides to outfit the bus with a 5-gallon food grade bucket for a chamber pot, you'll learn that, too. This Blog will be ALL FURTHUR2, ALL THE TIME. As the Partridge Family once said, Come on - Get happy!

Eventually, when Pete takes Furthur2 on its Maiden Trip of Adventure, you will be able to follow along here. It'll be exactly like being on the road with Jack Kerouac, only more school-bussy.

As part of this whole communal Blog process, I also invite all of you who read this diary to post your comments, insights, experiences, pictures on skooly culture.

And if any of you wants to be put on our mailing list (mostly, to be informed when a new essay is posted), please feel free to drop me a line: Buck Buckman.

Rock on!