Many old timers had fond recollections of their experience riding the school bus down the Suncrest grade to school in El Cajon in the late ’20s and early ’30s.

Bud Ettel recalls the time he spent riding up and down the grade in that little yellow bus with the bars on the windows (fondly called “The Monkey Cage”.) “Since we didn’t have portable radios or hand held CD players, we made our own games and music, like “knock knock”, or started a fight.  At which point Barney Cornelius, our bus driver, would stop the bus, grab the short hair on the back of your neck, put you off, and wait until the fight was over, which generally was right now.  He would then put the fighters back on and proceed up the grade.

Some of the guys – not Rolland or me, but don’t bet on it–would leave school ahead of the bus and start walking.  At that time every thing past the Black Diamond Market at Main and Mollison was grape vineyard, pastures, or citrus tree.  Also pomegranates!!!  The grapes, those big Tokays, wer OK, however the pomegranates were super!  Lots of seeds to spit, oops, to throw on the floor in the back of the bus.  Note: Barney would always pick us –them– up when he spotted us walking.  All this was great except after the kids had been let off, Barney would back-track, pick up the onces responsible, get brooms from the parents and make us clean up the bus.  I wonder if those pomegranate stains are still on the bus floor.

Bev Nerbonne shared, “This bus was called the ‘Monkey Cage’ as it had no windows, only bars. Whenever it rained, Barney Cornelius, the driver, would snap on a black curtain made of some-what water-proof material. I think Barney must have memorized the grade (by then we were using the new grade). No matter when you would look up you’d see his eyes on you in the mirror. I can’t say I blame him, as we were a pretty rowdy bunch of kids. If Barney hesitated too long at a stop sign, we’d all bail out and go raid a nearby orange or avocado grove. Barney was a very congenial person. One boy had his traps set half way up the grade. Barney would let him off the bus so he could go check his traps. One morning, however, Barney wouldn’t let this fellow on the bus. It didn’t take us long to figure out he had a skunk in his trap which had sprayed all over him.”

Mildred Black Zimmerman recalled, “A funny looking school bus would come pick us up in front of the store. I always thought that the bus was built on top of a flatbed truck. It was very strange looking and as we went down the grade to El Cajon the brakes were always burning. Even today when I think about it I can still smell that odor.”