Cox retires after four decades driving bus
KateLynn Slaamot
NLJ Correspondent
Blanch Cox retired on April 1 from driving bus for Black Thunder Coal Mine, bringing a total of 41 years of bus driving to a close (32 of those years were with Weston County School District No. 1).
Cox began driving bus with the school district in 2005, when her son was in first grade. The job allowed her to follow his schedule and be home with him.
For six years, Cox drove a town route, she said, and she had about 76 kids on her bus. Cox also drove the Custer Highlands route for about 18 years and also drove a Wyoming Highway 450 route during her time with the district.
“Most of the kids were really good, and I sure miss them,” Cox said, noting that she always carried candy to give to the kids if they behaved.
“They behaved because they wanted that little piece of candy,” she said.
Cox laughed as she recalled that her job wasn’t always just transporting kids. She remembers helping one girl with her homework.
An even more important aspect of her job was ensuring the safety of the kids on her bus, and she recalls dangerous weather conditions — whether that be icy roads on the highway or muddy roads on her Custer Highlands route.
Cox remembers one particular situation where it took her over an hour to get from the LAK ranch back to Newcastle because the road was coated with black ice.
“I think the most important thing is to get the kids back and forth safely,” Cox said.
While Cox admitted that some children could be challenging, she said that she enjoyed her young passengers and appreciated developing relationships with them.
Cox remembered one child in particular who came on the bus one day and said she better look out because he had sugar that morning and would be “bouncing off the walls.” Cox told him if he couldn’t behave, he wouldn’t ride her bus. He then folded up his arms with his books at his chest and sat like that the rest of the way.
“We ended up being pretty good friends,” Cox said.
Watching the children grow up was a joy, she said.
“They change so much,” Cox said. “I can remember most of their names.”
She drove bus for the mine for nine years. A number of men she hauled had also
been passengers on her school bus when they were children, Cox said.
“It was good to see how they turned out,” she said.
Cox shared with the News Letter Journal some of her life story, from long before her bus driving days.
“My life began on a ranch up in Montana. We didn’t have electricity,” Cox said. She said the town was Boyes, Montana, which isn’t there anymore.
Cox lived in a two-bedroom house with four sisters and two brothers. They had a water cistern that was gravity fed and a wood/coal cook stove and wood/coal heat. Sometimes, in the morning, it would be so cold that they had to wipe the frost off the window.
In the cold of winter, Cox and her siblings kept their clothes by their bed, and in the morning, they dressed in a space behind the coal stove, which was warmer than the rest of the house.
Cox also said that mail was delivered once a month on horseback.
“I’ve had quite a life,” Cox said. In 1948, her mother was severely burned and ended
up spending 14 months
hospitalized — 10 months in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and four months in
Rochester, Minnesota. Cox told the News Letter Journal that she and her siblings were practically orphans because their father was gone often to visit their mother.
During the blizzard of 1949, Cox said, one could walk off the roof of a house and onto the snow.
When Cox’s cousin got polio, she had to go to the children’s hospital in Hot Springs, South Dakota. Cox said that her cousin had to be wrapped in warm blankets, and she was kept in a contraption called an iron lung for 13 months. An iron lung is a device that encases most of a patient’s body to stimulate breathing through the use of negative pressure.
When her cousin got out of the hospital, Cox said, she was in braces up to her armpits, but she wanted to ride a horse. Cox helped her up so that she could ride.
Cox attended a country school with 12 students from first to eighth grade, and then she moved to Newcastle in 1956, when she was a freshman in high school.
Now that Cox is retired, she plans to do more traveling. Although her husband, James Daniel, passed away in 2005, she said she is looking forward to spending more time with their children. Cox also has a number of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a great-great grandchild.
She is also now part of the retired coffee club, the Astronauts, that meets at the 4-Way Gas ‘N Go, and she enjoys spending mornings drinking coffee and visiting with other retirees.