That’s what the kids called it. The Big Green Pickle was our church bus, an old International former school bus repainted in a garish green hue. Being old, it had its idiosyncrasies. The battery would drain overnight due to an undiscoverable fault in the electrical system, so the first thing a driver had to do before starting a trip would be to unlock the battery storage compartment and re-connect the battery. The bus was simple enough to drive, with a five-speed manual transmission coupled to a big V-8 motor. Once you got used to its bulk and the backswing in turns, you could get around fairly well without hitting anything.

As a church youth group leader, I got to haul the kids around to retreats, church camps and other adventures. In 1982, I took a group of twelve teens to Tennessee for a ten day hiking and camping trip. A team of college-age guides got us settled in at the big barn where we slept between expeditions. Then we went out on a couple of overnight hikes and one three day trek. I would drive the bus to the trailhead, disconnect the battery, and head out with the group for our adventure. The thing about rural Tennessee is that the roads were a tad on the narrow side, and they tended to wind up and down through the villages and hills. To get to one particular spot, we drove down a dirt road, barely one lane wide. It dropped down to a creek that was spanned by a one lane bridge. The road ran parallel to the creek, so I had to make a hard righthand turn to get on the bridge, then a hard left to get off. This involved much cranking of the wheel, backing up to get a better shot, and a prayerful traverse of the rickety looking structure.

Another fun trip was to the annual Youth Festival in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One year, we loaded teens from two congregations plus their group leaders into the Pickle. Oshkosh is about a hundred miles from Racine. The bus seemed to be running a little rough that morning as I drove out of the church parking lot. Approaching the first traffic light, I downshifted to stop, and with a loud bang, the muffler blew out. The mothers on the bus grew suddenly tense, the girls were startled, and the boys were cheering. When the light turned green, and I pulled onto the highway, it sounded like Saturday night at the local dirt racetrack. Every time I shifted gears, a loud pop emanated from the exhaust pipe. I could swear I saw flames shooting out from it in the rearview mirror.

Fortunately, most of the trip was on state highways, so there were few instances of bone-jarring explosions. Just the growling purr of our hotrod International V-8. When I stopped for gas in Oshkosh, one of the dismayed mothers asked, “You’re going to get that fixed now, aren’t you?”. “Nope”, I said, “We’ll fix it when we get back.”. I think all the boys were grinning.