The Suburban Bus Company
written by Paul Warnock
Back in the early to mid 1950’s, there were myriad cotton mills
in North Carolina, especially in the Rockingham area. The
prototype of these was the old Great Fall Mill that was
destroyed by General Sherman’s troops just prior to the end of
the US Civil War. This was only a few days before General
Joseph Johnston surrendered the southern portion of the
Confederate Army to General Sherman at Durham Station, N.
C. on April 17, 1865. I can imagine how this must have
“endeared” some of the local residents to General Sherman,
especially that close to the end of the war. By the way, most of
General Johnson’s troops were from Georgia and South
Carolina or points west as they had stayed in front of General
Sherman’s Army all the way from Savannah, but were
outnumbered at least two to one. Most of the North Carolina
men were in Virginia with General Lee, who had surrendered
to General Grant about a week before General Johnson
surrendered. This Mill was later rebuilt, but was abandoned
by the time I came on the scene.
From where I lived on Sand Hill Road (now Caroline Street),
you could go down the hill, cross the bridge over Falling Creek,
turn left at the railroad station, and continue down the tracks
across the trestle, and then you had a bird’s eye view of the old
Mill. At that time Falling Creek had been dammed to form a
pond. The dam could have been used to provide power to the
Mill, but it was no longer being used that way. This was about
a quarter mile from my house, maybe a little more. I imagine
that since General Sherman’s troops were coming from South
Carolina (on their way to Raleigh and the Battle at
Bentonville, N. C. which occurred on March 19-21, 1865), they
must have passed directly in front of where our house was
later built, went down the same hill I did, walked down the
same railroad tracks I did, and then they did their mischief.
Actually we were lucky they didn’t burn the towns in North
Carolina like they did in South Carolina, especially Columbia.
They had a particular vendetta against South Carolina because
it was Fort Sumter in April 1861 that started the shooting War.
The problem with working in the mills around Rockingham in
the 1950’s is that they didn’t pay much more than minimum
wage. Usually both spouses had to work just to provide the
basics. The basics did not include an automobile. That is,
most mill workers were dependent on the bus to provide
transportation to and from their work. That’s where the
Suburban Bus Company comes into the picture. They covered
at least the areas of East Rockingham and Pee Dee. Being that
you saw many of these blue trim on white buses, their routes
must have been more extensive than what I mention above. I
particularly knew one nice gentleman who rode the bus from
the Pee Dee area to the Safee Mill in East Rockingham and
return. I think the fare was 10 cents one way, but you could
buy weekly passes, et cetera to make it even cheaper than
that. These buses were similar to schools buses except for the
color. Just like the school buses, they were manufactured by
the Thomas Bus Company in High Point. That is, they were
Fords, Chevrolets, Internationals, GMC’s and maybe a few
Dodges. They were not the luxurious Becks used by Carolina
Trailways & Greyhound. I used to wonder if they were
salvaged from old school buses, but if anything, it was more
likely the other way around as these were fairly nice buses if
you weren’t traveling more than a couple miles.
It was after school one day, and I was riding with my father
going north on Hamer Hill Road about a mile beyond all the
Pee Dee Churches at the beginning of the road, near the area
called Bunker Hill. My father had been unable to see one of
his customers on his cracker route that day, and he was going
back to service that account if possible; this store was about a
third of the way to Ellerbe, but before the intersection with
highway 220. We were following one of the Suburban Buses.
My father was a safe, defensive driver, and that day was no
exception. He was going about thirty-five miles per hour, and
so was the bus until my father turned his head. If I were in
that situation, the only way I would turn my head away from
traffic would be to notice a beautiful young lady. My father
was not that sort of man; he was strictly a family man.
Besides, there was no beautiful young lady that day, nor was
there anybody else for that matter. Anyhow while he had his
head turned, the bus had stopped.
Now here is the situation. We were traveling about thirty-five
miles per hour. If I did my arithmetic correctly, that’s about
fifty-one feet per second. The rule back then for following
another vehicle in traffic was to have at least one car length
for every ten miles per hour you are traveling. Assuming our
car was twenty-two feet long, we should have been following
seventy-seven feet back behind the bus. All cars were full size
back then; there were no compacts. If we did nothing to lower
our speed, we would have had about one and one half seconds
until impact. When I noticed my father wasn’t slowing down, I
alerted him. According to the National Traffic Safety Board, it
takes forty-six feet for a car to decelerate from thirty-five mph
to a complete stop, that is, with a good set of brakes and a dry
road. That left us thirty-one feet of reaction time, which is a
tiny bit more the half a second. Evidently, my father only took
half a second since when it was all over, you would have been
hard pressed to slip a dime between the front bumper on our
car and back bumper on the bus. This fits into the category of
“close calls”. Just imagine the damage you could do by rear-
ending a bus that is loading passengers.
Anyhow, we made it to that store which was the object of the
trip. In fact, I think he got a nice order of crackers from the
storeowner. Often today, when we go to the beach from
Greensboro, I spend five to ten minutes driving around
Rockingham. Sometimes I cut off highway 220 about half way
from Ellerbe so as to come into town on Hamer Road. It’s a
little tricky, but it can be done. That store is no longer there,
or it may have been converted into a house. But I know exactly
the spot where this bus incident occurred.
There was junk food back then just as we have today. There’s
much more variety today. In our family back then, we had
practically no junk food, mainly because we couldn’t afford it.
I was lucky if I got one cola drink in a month. It was rare that I
got any junk food when I went on these trips with my Father. I
practically received no more than if I had not traveled with
him (maybe that’s why my siblings didn’t care to travel with
him). For lunch we usually had sardines & soda crackers, or
Vienna sausages and soda crackers. Of course we used “Krispy
Crackers” since that was the Sunshine brand he sold. Now for
this valuable service I had performed in preventing my father
from having a serious accident, you would thank that would be
worth more than a “Thank You”, but it wasn’t. I didn’t even
get an extra cola. I never told my mother about this incident; I
wonder if my father did.
written by Paul Warnock
Back in the early to mid 1950’s, there were myriad cotton mills
in North Carolina, especially in the Rockingham area. The
prototype of these was the old Great Fall Mill that was
destroyed by General Sherman’s troops just prior to the end of
the US Civil War. This was only a few days before General
Joseph Johnston surrendered the southern portion of the
Confederate Army to General Sherman at Durham Station, N.
C. on April 17, 1865. I can imagine how this must have
“endeared” some of the local residents to General Sherman,
especially that close to the end of the war. By the way, most of
General Johnson’s troops were from Georgia and South
Carolina or points west as they had stayed in front of General
Sherman’s Army all the way from Savannah, but were
outnumbered at least two to one. Most of the North Carolina
men were in Virginia with General Lee, who had surrendered
to General Grant about a week before General Johnson
surrendered. This Mill was later rebuilt, but was abandoned
by the time I came on the scene.
From where I lived on Sand Hill Road (now Caroline Street),
you could go down the hill, cross the bridge over Falling Creek,
turn left at the railroad station, and continue down the tracks
across the trestle, and then you had a bird’s eye view of the old
Mill. At that time Falling Creek had been dammed to form a
pond. The dam could have been used to provide power to the
Mill, but it was no longer being used that way. This was about
a quarter mile from my house, maybe a little more. I imagine
that since General Sherman’s troops were coming from South
Carolina (on their way to Raleigh and the Battle at
Bentonville, N. C. which occurred on March 19-21, 1865), they
must have passed directly in front of where our house was
later built, went down the same hill I did, walked down the
same railroad tracks I did, and then they did their mischief.
Actually we were lucky they didn’t burn the towns in North
Carolina like they did in South Carolina, especially Columbia.
They had a particular vendetta against South Carolina because
it was Fort Sumter in April 1861 that started the shooting War.
The problem with working in the mills around Rockingham in
the 1950’s is that they didn’t pay much more than minimum
wage. Usually both spouses had to work just to provide the
basics. The basics did not include an automobile. That is,
most mill workers were dependent on the bus to provide
transportation to and from their work. That’s where the
Suburban Bus Company comes into the picture. They covered
at least the areas of East Rockingham and Pee Dee. Being that
you saw many of these blue trim on white buses, their routes
must have been more extensive than what I mention above. I
particularly knew one nice gentleman who rode the bus from
the Pee Dee area to the Safee Mill in East Rockingham and
return. I think the fare was 10 cents one way, but you could
buy weekly passes, et cetera to make it even cheaper than
that. These buses were similar to schools buses except for the
color. Just like the school buses, they were manufactured by
the Thomas Bus Company in High Point. That is, they were
Fords, Chevrolets, Internationals, GMC’s and maybe a few
Dodges. They were not the luxurious Becks used by Carolina
Trailways & Greyhound. I used to wonder if they were
salvaged from old school buses, but if anything, it was more
likely the other way around as these were fairly nice buses if
you weren’t traveling more than a couple miles.
It was after school one day, and I was riding with my father
going north on Hamer Hill Road about a mile beyond all the
Pee Dee Churches at the beginning of the road, near the area
called Bunker Hill. My father had been unable to see one of
his customers on his cracker route that day, and he was going
back to service that account if possible; this store was about a
third of the way to Ellerbe, but before the intersection with
highway 220. We were following one of the Suburban Buses.
My father was a safe, defensive driver, and that day was no
exception. He was going about thirty-five miles per hour, and
so was the bus until my father turned his head. If I were in
that situation, the only way I would turn my head away from
traffic would be to notice a beautiful young lady. My father
was not that sort of man; he was strictly a family man.
Besides, there was no beautiful young lady that day, nor was
there anybody else for that matter. Anyhow while he had his
head turned, the bus had stopped.
Now here is the situation. We were traveling about thirty-five
miles per hour. If I did my arithmetic correctly, that’s about
fifty-one feet per second. The rule back then for following
another vehicle in traffic was to have at least one car length
for every ten miles per hour you are traveling. Assuming our
car was twenty-two feet long, we should have been following
seventy-seven feet back behind the bus. All cars were full size
back then; there were no compacts. If we did nothing to lower
our speed, we would have had about one and one half seconds
until impact. When I noticed my father wasn’t slowing down, I
alerted him. According to the National Traffic Safety Board, it
takes forty-six feet for a car to decelerate from thirty-five mph
to a complete stop, that is, with a good set of brakes and a dry
road. That left us thirty-one feet of reaction time, which is a
tiny bit more the half a second. Evidently, my father only took
half a second since when it was all over, you would have been
hard pressed to slip a dime between the front bumper on our
car and back bumper on the bus. This fits into the category of
“close calls”. Just imagine the damage you could do by rear-
ending a bus that is loading passengers.
Anyhow, we made it to that store which was the object of the
trip. In fact, I think he got a nice order of crackers from the
storeowner. Often today, when we go to the beach from
Greensboro, I spend five to ten minutes driving around
Rockingham. Sometimes I cut off highway 220 about half way
from Ellerbe so as to come into town on Hamer Road. It’s a
little tricky, but it can be done. That store is no longer there,
or it may have been converted into a house. But I know exactly
the spot where this bus incident occurred.
There was junk food back then just as we have today. There’s
much more variety today. In our family back then, we had
practically no junk food, mainly because we couldn’t afford it.
I was lucky if I got one cola drink in a month. It was rare that I
got any junk food when I went on these trips with my Father. I
practically received no more than if I had not traveled with
him (maybe that’s why my siblings didn’t care to travel with
him). For lunch we usually had sardines & soda crackers, or
Vienna sausages and soda crackers. Of course we used “Krispy
Crackers” since that was the Sunshine brand he sold. Now for
this valuable service I had performed in preventing my father
from having a serious accident, you would thank that would be
worth more than a “Thank You”, but it wasn’t. I didn’t even
get an extra cola. I never told my mother about this incident; I
wonder if my father did.
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