On Your Own

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Driving a school bus, whether it be a station wagon, a Volkswagen minibus, or a big yellow, involves following a specified route each morning and afternoon, stopping at designated places and picking up kids along the way. The driver has to be at the first stop at anywhere from 7 to 8 a.m. in the morning, and most routes take from one to one and a half hours to complete. Then, at 2 p.m. (or 3 to 3:30), the kids are picked up at school and the same route is traveled in reverse. Sometimes the school bus driver will also be responsible for making an extra run at lunchtime for the half-day kindergarteners. Most drivers pick up their buses at a central place (often the bus company yard) in the morning and return them when their route is finished.

The main occupational hazard of school bus driving is children: Whether they're in nursery school or high school, most kids feel that a school bus is a free-for-all on wheels. Since as the driver you will be responsible for the kids, nerves of steel are essential. One other slight disadvantage, especially if you're not a housewife, is that even though you may work only four hours a day, your day is pretty well broken up because you're working both early morning and late afternoon. And of course, you can't just decide to disappear for a day and go fishing.

In some areas school bus drivers are well-paid teamsters or members of the school maintenance crew, but in most places either the school or the bus company hires regular people to drive its buses. If you'd like to find work as a school bus driver, call all the local schools—don't forget schools for the blind and/or handicapped—and ask about driving jobs: Check also with bus companies listed in the Yellow Pages to see if they need drivers.

Once you've gotten a job, you'll need a bus-driving license, which involves a bit of training and a fairly easy test. Usually someone will take you through your route a few times and will help you get accustomed to driving the bus.

School bus driving pays an average of $5 an hour, though this figure varies widely, depending on the type of vehicle you drive and the number of students you transport. One housewife-mother I spoke to earns $175 per week for twenty hours of work: her regular salary plus $5 for each additional trip she makes for the half-day students.

One especially nice feature of school bus driving is that, depending on your other work situations, you can collect unemployment compensation in the summer when your salary falls below a specified level. Earn while you tan.

Treasure Hunting and Beachcombing

When I first thought of treasure hunting as an unusual way to make money, I was not really considering it with any seriousness. I figured there were perhaps a dozen treasure hunters in this country . . half of them were sifting through Bob Dylan's garbage, half of them were dropping like lead weights from small boats off the coast of Florida, and all of them were crazy. As it turns out, I was as wrong as I could be. There are thousands of normal, uncrazy treasure hunters in this country and they're making good sums of money while you're sitting around reading this book. In fact, some of them make so much money that you couldn't pry any information out of them with a clam knife, and who can blame them? It's all tax-free and great fun, and they don't want any competition.

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