Harold Keyser

By 1948, Missoula's Target Range area was beginning to grow - just as the Lolo community had done seven years earlier. What's more Missoula County High School officials were contemplating regular school bus service from East Missoula and from the Bonner and Clinton communities. A year later, when the Target Range, Clinton and East Missoula-Bonner routes became a reality, Ray Beach bid low on them and secured the contract. Then he bought three new school buses, each of which had a Superior body on a GMC chassis. He also hired two new drivers Guy Arnold and Harold Keyser, who was to become a Beach Transportation mainstay.

Born in the farming community of Philip, SD, Keyser was a high school sophomore when he moved with his family to Florence in September, 1941. "The Beaches were some of the first people we knew when we moved to Florence." As a UM student, Keyser was working in the Missoula Mercantile's grocery department, when Ray Beach approached him in the summer of 1949 and offered him a part-time job driving a school bus. "I was sort of surprised, in a way, because I wasn't expecting it. I replied, 'I've never driven a bus before.' and he said, 'Well, you can learn, can't you?' I said, 'I guess I could.' "Keyser, 23, resigned from his grocery store job a few weeks before high school classes convened, and "started driving a bus around" for practice." Then two weeks before school, he began driving MCHS football players to and from scrimmages at Missoula's old Victory field, now a residential neighborhood.

At the time, Ray Beach was operating his four buses out of a small, rented building on West Spruce Street near the present Missoula City Hall. Said Keyser, "We had a little office in there about the size of a table. Ray had a big chair to sit on and the other drivers and I had a bench. We'd haul football players before our regular routes started in the afternoon, and then pick them up along toward 5 o'clock or 5:30 at night. At first, the only hauling we did was for high school, and then later we had two or three routes for grade school. In the mornings, when we got done about 9 a.m., we'd lock up the Spruce place and all of us drivers would go our seperate ways. Then we'd meet back there again about 2:30 in the afternoon ..."

Calling school bus driving an "instant love," Keyser handled the Bonner route for 15 years before taking an office job as Beach Transportation's dispatcher. "It was one of those deals where I could hardly wait to get out there to Bonner and see those kids every morning. We'd always have things we'd talk about, and some kids would tell me stuff that they wouldn't tell their folks. They'd want me to give them advice on this and that and the other thing, and it was just like being the father of a big family ..."

Keyser had dozens of observations, reminiscences and stories from his bus driving days:

East Missoula kids had a tendency to be orangutans. We had trouble with a few, but only a few. I remember one time where the night bus driver - I drove mornings - had kicked one of these kids off the bus. Our procedure was that if a kid got kicked off the bus at night, he was off the morning bus, also. So I was told to keep this kid off the bus, which I did. He came to get on the bus in the morning, and as he walked up the steps, I gave his a little shove backward and said, 'You're off the bus; you're denied.' He came at me about three times and finally said, 'I'm gonna go home and get my old man.' I knew who the 'old man' was because it wasn't the first time I had had trouble with this kid. Well, the kid did get his Dad, and somehow the two of them beat me to Central School, where we took the East Missoula students. I knew I was in for problems because the father was one of these guys who didn't have any sense and who just flew off the handle. So I hurried up and called Ray (Beach) and told him to get down to the school This guy wanted to have it out with me with 'any kind of weapon that I wanted to use.' I had a heck of a time talking him out of it. ********** Ninety percent of the people who find fault with bus drivers give you the old hee-haw that 'I drove school bus once, and I know this and I know that.' They're all coming at you with that ... Still, the number of run-ins I had with parents was hardly anything ... We had our problems, but overall we didn't have any trouble with kids. If we did, we could handle it. All we did was open the door and say, 'This is the end of the line for you. Get off.' You didn't have to fill out 10 pieces of red tape like you do now. I unloaded a load one day - shop and home-ec kids. They were being rowdy and I just stopped the bus and said, 'This is the end of the line. Get off.' ********** I remember an incident involving an irate father whose son habitually was late for the bus: This one morning I thought I had all the kids and I said, 'Is anybody else coming?' The kids said no, so I went on about my route. When I got to school, this kid's father was waiting for me. He was very mad. In a way, I kind of dared him to get on the bus because he wanted in the worst say to clean my clock. I wouldn't get off the bus. The guy had every opportunity to step on the bus and cause some kind of problem, but he didn't.' ********** One time I was hauling kids from Whittier to Washington. These girls wanted something - I forget what - and I denied them. The next day I went to pick them up and they were all smiling and friendly. They said they had baked some cookies and wanted me to have them. Well, they had filled the cookies with the worst hot stuff imaginable. My eyes started watering. Luckily it wasn't some deadly poison or something. ********** I guess I'll always remember an incident involving one of the East Missoula grade school girls. I used to kind of tease her in fun, and she usually seemed to take it pretty well. This one afternoon, as she got onto the bus, I teased her about some boy, or something. Later I was letting some kids off out there on the highway, and I was just sitting there watching them disperse and making sure nobody got run over. I wasn't paying any attention to the kids coming up from the back and getting off, but I knew they were about all out of the bus. All of a sudden I saw some kind of shadow go up over the top of my head. The next thing I knew I was hanging on for dear life, seeing stars and the moon and everything else that you see just before you pass out. This little gal who I'd been teasing - she was probably a fifth grader, or at least old enough to have plenty of power - had come down with a real thick book with both hands, right on top of my head. She just clobbered me - really let me have it good - and I suppose I had to sit there for 15 minutes before I was able to get hold of my senses - I guess she wasn't in any mood to take any teasing that day. ********** These two very valuable dogs were owned by a Missoula law-enforcement officer named Parnell, who used them for tracking people and one thing and another. His little girl kind of owned them, too, and she was the sweetest little thing you'd want to meet and a very good friend of mine. She'd always sit behind me and jabber to me all the way in. These dogs had a bad habit of running alongside the bus and biting the tires. Then they'd cross over in front of the bus and bite the other front tire. I kept telling this little gal that she should keep her dogs home because sometime they were accidentally going to get run over. Sure enough, one icy winter morning, the dogs were biting at the tires and one of them went to jump around in front of the bus. Just as he got in front of the wheel, he slipped. Bingo! I ran over him and killed him deader than a door nail. That little girl didn't understand that I didn't do that on purpose. She probably was a fifth grader, and as near as I can remember she never talked to me again for the rest of the time I drove that bus ... She never forgave me. ********** Early in my school bus bus years, I thought it would be nice to give my Mom a ride in my bus. We got into the bus in the middle building and drove out through the north doors and across Mount Avenue. In those days, Mount wasn't paved; instead there were four deep grooves in the street from traffic. I had put my Mom in the back of the bus. If you've ever ridden in the back of a school bus, you know what a bounce you get when you go over ruts or grooves. I knew that she would receive a little disturbance, but I hit it a bit hard. As I looked back at here, all I could see was daylight under her. She was sideways, upside down and every other way she could be by the time we got across the street. I'm sure she ended up in a completely different seat. I was so sorry for my funny joke on here, and at least she didn't get hurt, but I laughted and laughed - and still do to this day - as I remember looking back at her coming down like she was waiting for her parachute to open. Actually, I had pulled a boner. I'd never do that again to anyone.

In 1952, three years after he started driving school buses, Keyser got married. His wife, the former Darlene Evans of Piltzville, Montana, was an MCHS sophomore and one of his riders when he met her. Keyser described the courtship this way, "Darlene was one of two or three of the last kids who got off the bus, and at night she'd sort of stop and talk to me. We got pretty well acquainted and that kind of got to be a habit. Then, in the mornings, I'd have 20 minutes to waste between high school and grade school runs. She'd always sit on the bus and we'd talk ... It really took the eye of some of the teachers, and they wondered if Ray Beach knew what was going on. Of course he did; it was no secret. The girls' adviser at the high school was having a fit, too. and called Darlene in to find out if she knew what she was doing since I'm eight years older than she is. Darlene assured her that she knew what she was doing. Then the coaches I hauled out to football got the word; they kidded us all the time and asked me whether I thought I was robbing the cradle. Darlene finally graduated from high school in 1952, and we got married on the 24th of June the same year. It has lasted ever since.

The Keysers were to have four children. One of them, Mike, has been a Beach Transportation driver; another, Tina, has worked part time as an aide on a Beach special education mini-bus.

Except for a 2 1/2-year period, from 1958 to mid 1961, when he and his family lived in California, Keyser would be a vital part of the Beach bus operation. "Being around here has been the best years of my life." said Keyser, whose friends and co-workers knew him best at "Harley."

This story has been excerpted and edited from Second to None: the story of Beach Transportation Co. and its buses written by former newspaperman Steve Smith and published for Beach Transportation by Pictoral Histories Publishing Company in 1986.