The Te Reinga Bus

By David

So I'll cherish the old rugged cross,
till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
and exchange it some day for a crown.

At 7.15am our school bus left Te Reinga for the 25 mile trip to Wairoa. It was an uncomfortable hour and fifteen minute journey on a dusty, gravel road. Lacking both heat and air conditioning it was cold in winter and impossibly hot and sticky in Hawke’s Bay’s summer. Usually Kahui and Donald brought their guitars. They made the trip bearable. No, better than that, they made it a spiritual adventure. Most mornings their first song was the American George Bennard’s beautiful hymn, The Old Rugged Cross. At that stage of the trip I was the only Pakeha (European) on the bus. My fellow Maori travelers had voices magnificently suited to the hymn’s lyrics and devotion. I didn’t sing, preferring to swim in the emotion they built with their guitars and voices.

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power through-out the universe displayed.

Twenty minutes into our trip and the next Pakeha got on the bus. Janet, she always sat in the seat immediately in front of mine. For some completely unknown reason the long hill down to Janet’s farm gate prompted Kahui and Donald to begin the 1886 Swedish hymn, How Great Thou Art. It was appropriate. There was an awesome quality about much that we ignored; the rough bush and scrubby hills of Te Reinga; all grays and browns; the unkempt specter of New Zealand’s wilderness. Janet’s stop began the transition from brown and gray to fertilized green pastures for sheep and cows and the gold winter hay. Ten minutes further and Philip joined the bus. He sat next to me and often used the journey to study. I never did that.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Another twenty minutes and another stop; just past the Marumaru Pub and before the Community Hall at the de Lautour’s farm. The seat next to Janet was taken by Kay. She was clearly the smartest girl on the bus and probably the school. She had brains and looks, a combination that left teenage male mortals like Philip and myself in some awe. Her reaction to our bluster was mild disapproval. Her father, by the way, is one hell of a track athlete. He has a world ranking in the 85-89 age group of first in the 10,000 and 1500, second in the 5000 and 800 and third in the 400. He is the world champion over 800 and 10,000 meters. He also served in World War Two at Monte Cassino, the same battle that cost my father his arm and eye. And still my mates sang on; their delivery of John Newton’s Amazing Grace was as good as any commercial version.

O come all ye faithful,
Joyful, and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye
To Bethlehem!
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels!

Our school hymn, Adeste Fideles, was sung better on the Te Reinga bus than it ever was at school. We were nearing town now; just six miles to go, passed the ditch that the bus had rolled into when driver, “Old Jerry”, lost concentration. That mishap happened the day before the North Island of New Zealand Secondary School Swimming Championships. As we rolled over I cut my knee tumbling around the inside of the bus. Worse than that, I landed on Donald’s cherished guitar. The guitar lost. The next day I was second in the 100 breaststroke. An official said he thought I should be disqualified because my cut leg was not working in parallel and together with the other leg. Those officials can be pretty harsh.

Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless,
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb

The trips best hymn was saved to last. Kahui and Donald irreverently began Hoffman’s Are you Washed in the Blood just as we passed the town’s huge meat processing plant. About 9000 lambs a day met their end in that factory. As the bus rolled by, pedestrians stopped to listen to our Christian revival, not realizing it was all a satire on New Zealand’s agricultural industry.

By now you may well be asking, what has this article got to do with sport? Let me explain. In our senior year, lead guitarists, Kahui and Donald, and a Wairoa town guy called Billy Van Berkam and I took the train 100 miles to Napier to take on the big city schools in the Provincial (State) Cross Country Championships; and we won. All those hymns, they just had to work.