About Us

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.