Doris Rhodes: Buses on the Alcan

My husband, Glen Rhodes, and I came to Alaska over the Alcan Highway in 1955. The first job Glen got in Anchorage was driving school buses for the Anchorage School District. The bus barn was on Blueberry Lane, next to the old North Star Elementary School (now Steller High School). The bus garage boss, Al Schneider, and his family lived in a trailer home on the bus-barn property. I think there were 22 buses at the time. All of them were owned by the Anchorage School District. There were no contract buses then.

Glen drove bus for a couple of years and worked summers at our sawmill on Turnagain Arm at Bird Creek. Glen transformed from driving bus to being a mechanic in the garage. Eventually, Al Schneider became the foreman for the mechanic shop as well.

The best drivers were selected to drive newly purchased buses up the Alcan Highway. At that point the Alcan was mostly all gravel. The Anchorage drivers picked them up at an assembly plant Outside. One was in Lima, Ohio, and another in North Carolina. Al Schneider headed up the crew when they went to handle the delivery, taking as many drivers as there were buses to be picked up. They left early and went on a few days’ vacation before the drive home. They all met at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. If the ticket cost more than a direct flight, the driver paid the extra and took leave. We wives were never allowed to go, and as near as I remember, no women drivers went. I always resented the fact that Glen got a stateside vacation. Since I never got one for the first four years, he bought me gifts instead.

At the body factory, they checked each bus with the specifications that were ordered. Often the buses needed some alterations before they were accepted by the Anchorage drivers. All of these men were either mechanics or drivers. They drove in a group at the correct speed and over a pre-planned route to a small town in Minnesota. This place was Al Schneider’s hometown, and some of his family lived there. The relatives and eventually the town adopted the yearly Anchorage bus drivers. They stayed in homes for two or three days and went through each bus for grease jobs and any other maintenance the buses might need before the drive home.

Doris Rhodes came to Anchorage in 1955, but her parents had been here previously, from 1942 to 1946. Anchorage has been quite an experience: statehood, the 1964 Earthquake, oil, the Alaska Railroad, and the military—not to mention gold.