Get on the bus

When you’re on a bus trip, you want a driver who’s conscientious. You want someone who knows the rules he’s supposed to abide by -- and follows them.

Then again, there’s such a thing as taking the rules too far.

Take the unidentified man who was driving a charter bus for Greyhound on Thursday near Corsicana. He was headed for Dallas, 60 miles away.

But his allotted time for driving was up. So he pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and told his passengers that another driver would replace him. With that, he up and left.

His poor passengers, felt, well, abandoned. And these weren’t just ordinary passengers.

They were 40 men WHO HAD JUST BEEN PAROLED OR RELEASED FROM THE STATE PEN. Some wore ankle bracelets, and I’m not talking jewelry.

Fortunately, these weren’t your average run-of-the-mill prisoners. They were the just- released-or-paroled kind. So they played nice.

At first, they just milled around the bus … until the store clerk called police and said something to the effect of, “Uh, I got a problem here.”

Cops arrived and watched the prisoners while dispatchers and Greyhound folks tried to get another driver. And one finally showed up three hours later.

No word yet on what happened to the first bus driver who bailed out. He needs some kind of punishment, and not just being disqualified for Driver of the Month.