Y62 CAR SERIES
The Great Turtle Express

By Gary E. Richardson

From the start, the Great Turtle Express was a low-budget, high-energy machine. We bought the 1958 International-Harvester/Carpenter school-bus for $400 in June, 1970. We had no idea who or how many of us would eventually be living on board. We knew there would be lots of us and that the bus would be home for months — until we found land for a permanent settlement.

We drove the bus home, removed the seats, and parked it in our front yard at 6810 Emlen St. in Philadelphia. Except for a couple of brief outings, it sat there for two months as we studied its every inch, drawing and redrawing floor plans. A brake failure during one of the outings alerted us to the need to rebuild the brakes all around, which we did.

By the end of August we had a basic plan. We removed the old linoleum floor, sand-blasted, patched, re-tiled, and carpeted the entire floor. We then started shopping the second-hand stores for the kitchen, turning up an apartment-sized stove (four burners and oven), an eight-cubic-foot electric refrigerator, and a stainless steel double sink — all for less than $50. The range and refrigerator needed patching; the fiberglass materials left over from patching the holes in the floor sufficed for both.

After purchasing what seemed a vast amount of 3/8″, ½” and ¾” plywood and 2x4s, we began building. We started at the front, behind the driver’s seat and the step-well, and worked toward the rear emergency door. We located the kitchen in the first eight feet behind the step-well where, being roughly at the center of the wheel-base, it would receive minimal jostling. Across from the kitchen, directly behind the driver, came the eating booth, with storage in both benches. Lowering the table converted the booth into a double bed.

Kitchen storage was in cabinets under the cutting-board/work surface and under the sink. Additional cabinets were suspended from the ceiling over the kitchen cooking and eating areas. We built a larger cabinet in the space between the ceiling and the top of the refrigerator.

Beyond the refrigerator we built in a series of shelves and drawers and a compartment to house our stereo system — an old bureau providing the basis for this assembly. Beyond this we built a wide bench along the wall that doubled as a bunk at night. On the opposite side, beyond the eating booth, we put in another long wall bench, this one doubling as two bunks end to end. We also made provision for upper bunks to be suspended by chains from the ceiling and bracketed in at mid-window level above each of the three bench/bunks. These upper bunks were readily removable and stored on the roof when not in use. Running along above the bunks was a series of storage cubbies similar to the cabinets over the kitchen-dining area.

The last six feet of the bus we partitioned off to provide a separate room. This room served as a library — with book shelves built into the partitioning wall and a center table with a wrap-around bench on three sides. The room also became a king-sized (6’x8′) pad when the table was collapsed. Again, along the sides of the ceiling were cabinets and extra shelf space.
Finally, we built a roof-rack that ran the length of the bus. Over half of the rack was enclosed, providing over 150 cubic feet of water-resistant storage for staples, clothing, and other items to which constant access is not required. Also in the roof rack was our 50-gallon, gravity-feed water tank. On the open section of the roof rack were mounted our 1000-watt generator (sufficient for refrigerator, stereo, lights, sewing machine, etc.), spare LP and gasoline tanks.

Additional inside storage was provided under the bench/bunks. The lift-up doors giving access to these areas also serves another purpose — propped up with specially made blocks, they expanded our sleeping capacity. We custom-made all of our cushions so that when they were not serving as backrests on the benches, they fit snugly together to become the mattresses for the expanded beds. All told, the bus could sleep 25.

In mid-September, our construction complete, 11 of us — six adults and five children — loaded our earthly possessions and boarded the Great Turtle Express. Because we did all of the work ourselves (with a little help from our friends), the total cost of our new home, including the $400 paid for the 60-passenger vehicle, was less than $1200.

In eastern California, some eight months and 8,000 miles later, eight members of the original crew remained aboard. We learned a lot about bus living and would be making a few changes… but that’s another story.

 
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