The "Bus Years"

 
This 35' long 1965 Carpenter school bus, powered by a GMC engine, got a new life when Alice and I bought it in late 1980 and converted it into a motorhome, our home!

All of the furnishings on board were built by hand from scratch—which involved a lot of prayer since I had never undertaken a project like this before. Our first trip from New York down into Virginia and the Carolinas was made with a simple bed-frame in the back and a folding chair up front for Alice.
I would work at my job as a management consultant during the day, then, still pastoring the church, preach or teach a bible study in the evening, and then work on the bus into the early morning hours. I would have to figure out how to make a piece of furniture that had to be curved to fit inside a bus, strong enough to take the bouncing around I knew we would have on the road, and then get a little sleep before the next day started the process all over again. I am blessed to have a Brother who was a carpenter, and He gave me great advice all the way along.

The sofa in the "living room" pulled out and converted to a bed that slept two. Many, many people spent a lot of time with us fellowshipping in this little space. I built the frame and cut the dense foam and then Alice and I bought material and took it to an upholsterer who did all of the work on this as well as the dinette that I also built.

All of the overhead cabinets throughout the bus were handcrafted to fit the curve of the bus' roofline. The cabinet in the foreground covered a large propane furnace—one that got overwhelmed a couple of times as we traveled through below zero temperatures in the mid-West one winter. Fortunately, our God is a consuming fire and Hot Stuff!
This bus was our home for two years as we travelled the United States ministering, preaching and teaching. The Lord opened doors continually as we never had an itinerary. Alice and I would minister in song and then I would preach. For a while, we had another couple travelling with us, Bob and Pam Rozzoni who were (still are in fact) really annointed in their ability to lead in worship. Pam became pregnant with their first child and they returned to New York.
Oh, Taste and see that the Lord is good! Alice made wonderful things happen in our little kitchen—often with the food that we received as offerings from some of the churches where we ministered in rural farming areas. The dinette converted into a double bed for those times that we had extra company.

Alice takes a break in our bedroom to read the Word. The bed hinged up to provide access to the rear engine compartment to reach those parts too difficult to get to from the outside back.

This travelling home was unique in one way (among many) in that New York State gave us license plates for a car. When I got the bus registered I had removed all of the bus seats but had not started the conversion. The motor vehicle employee I dealt with figured that it was no longer a bus, wasn't yet an RV, so they gave me plates for a car—the biggest one in New York! By the way, the plates were special order, they read "SOON" Go ahead and ask, everybody else did! :)


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