For most Edina children, the school year begins with a bus ride. Navigating the big stairs, figuring out where to sit—window or aisle seat, up by the bus driver or back with the big kids—is an old rite of passage.
Although busing has been part of Edina life for more than a century, the buses weren’t always big, yellow and motorized.
During his boyhood in the late 1910s, Dudley Parsons usually walked 1.7 miles from his house at 4221 Alden Dr. to school near what is now Edina City Hall. During the winter, however, he rode on a “covered wagon bus.”
“There were benches … and hay in the bottom to keep our feet dry and warm, and horse blankets to cover our knees,” Parsons said in a 1994 interview. Even then, children liked to roughhouse; they would push each other out into the snowdrifts and then “cheer the unfortunate fellow along as he ran to catch up.”
Before Edina’s first high school was built in 1949, northern Edina kids took a train or streetcar to Minneapolis schools, while farm kids had to walk or hitchhike. Finally in 1933 the rural Cahill District purchased its first official school bus, a Packard limousine, to take students to St. Louis Park High.
By the late 1930s, Mary Fenlason rode a big yellow bus on her first day of kindergarten. “That first step was huge,” she said. And that is something that hasn’t changed for Edina kindergartners taking their first bus ride this year.
“Growing Up in Edina: A Show and Tell Exhibit” will open October 29. For more information, see edinahistoricalsociety.org or call the museum at 612.928.4577.
