The long, adventure-filled trip of Ron Amos, F103611, and his 1953 “skoolie.”
By Skip Tate, Associate Editor
October 2021
The early 1970s was a time of peace, love, and flower power. Hair was long. Tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottoms were in fashion. Life was groovy, man. This was especially true along Cardiff Reef, a hippie hang-out and surfer’s paradise just north of San Diego, California.
Cardiff Reef was Ron Amos’ kind of hangout. He was a student and teacher at College of the Desert, a community college in nearby Palm Desert, and he would spend his free time at the beach, hitting the waves and digging the bus conversions the surfers would strap their boards to.
For nearly 50 years, Ron Amos has lived in his converted school bus, adding a wood-burning stove, back porch, second-story bedroom, new engine, and more to the “skoolie.”
“After seeing a bunch of hippie bus conversions, with built-in, beautiful, all-wood interiors with walls and cabinets and wood-burning stoves, I just had to build one for myself,” he said. “So, the hunt was on.”
Driving home one afternoon, he spotted a bus parked in the back of an RV dealership. He turned around and pulled into the lot. “Is that bus for sale way up in the back?” he asked.
It was.
“When I pushed the bifold door open and stepped inside, I was blown away by the length and amount of room,” he said. “The largest bus I saw at the Cardiff Reef was what is known in the bus world as a ‘five-window bus.’ This was a 10-window bus. From windshield to back door, it was 29 feet long inside.”
Officially, the bus was a 1953 International L185 Loadstar that spent the first 21 years of its life shuttling kids to and from a local Catholic school. It was in good shape and had just 30,000 miles on the odometer. Ron was in love.
Little did he realize that the love affair would turn into a long-term relationship.
For nearly five decades, Ron has lived in the bus, calling it his full-time home, collecting a lifetime of adventures, and perpetually extending the hippie happiness he first felt back in his days at Cardiff Reef.
“My most memorable adventure,” he said, “has been living in this bus for more than 46 years and all the people and opportunities that have come my way because of this trip I have been on.”
The bus has taken him to Vancouver, Canada, and back, and a lot of places in between, although Ron has no idea how far he’s traveled — the bus hasn’t had a working odometer since he swapped out the engine for something more powerful back in 1974.
The engine swap, of course, was a necessity. The original in-line six-cylinder Red Diamond engine topped out at 45 mph, which was fine for shuttling kids to and from school but not for the open road; so, Ron pulled a Rocket 88 engine from a 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and put it in the bus. With eight cylinders, a two-barrel carburetor, and 455 cubic inches of raw Detroit muscle under the hood, the bus could now hit 80 mph on the highway — or something like that. The speedometer hasn’t worked since 1974, either.
“I love to pass the tour buses and see the expressions on the faces of the people as I pass them by,” he said. “But most of the time I just like to cruise between 50 to 55 mph. That way I get to see and enjoy the people and scenery I pass by.”
The bus has undergone three conversions over the years, the second of which, he said, was “a demand from the authorities.” The skoolie needed to be brought up to code so it could legally be labeled a motorhome and he could live in it. Holding tanks and various power sources have been installed over the years. A handmade wood-burning stove was added for those long, cool winter nights. A 5-foot-long porch was built onto the back for those long, hot summer days.
In 1975, while he was mooch-docking on the land of his friend “Anchovy,” he cut a hole in the roof and built a second-story bedroom, complete with two queen-sized beds. He first painted the bus white and named it “The Great White Whale,” and then switched to gloss black and renamed it “The Midnight Marauder.”
The engine, the power sources, even the color may have changed over the past 46 years, but one thing hasn’t: the thrill Ron gets every time he steps into his hippie home on wheels. Life’s still groovy, man.