TURNER — Carter Veilleux’s braces are a school-bus homage of yellow and black elastics.
He has dressed up as a bus three times at Halloween, wearing a homemade yellow, black and blinkered felt sandwich board.
The 12-year-old has an authentic blue vinyl bus seat, battered bus stop sign and bus rear-view mirror in his bedroom.
Veilleux’s been into school buses almost forever.
His grandparents live across from McMahon Elementary in Lewiston, where he’d watch the buses come and go as a little guy.
“He was little, little, little, before he was 2,” said mom Kim Veilleux. “That’s where it started and it’s spiraled from there. After the first day of school he didn’t mind leaving me behind because he was on a real school bus.”
Veilleux, who starts seventh grade at Tripp Middle School on Monday, ditched his Bob the Builder bedroom years ago and told his mom he wanted “an older kid’s room, I want a bus room.” She painted the bottom of the walls bus yellow with a black stripe. He added detailed pencil sketches of different bus models.
Last year, before Christmas, Kim called the Turner school bus garage and asked if they had any spare parts they planned to junk. Carter found the seat and accessories under the tree.
“I still have buses left to get,” he said. His miniatures collection — poking out from above his closets, under a dresser and parked along the windowsill — numbers 93. “My goal is 100.”
He’d love one, life-size, for the yard. That, his mom says laughing, won’t happen.
In past school years, Carter Veilleux has memorized the bus route, for fun, and helped substitute drivers when they’ve asked (and they have). He said he isn’t sure how, but among friends, teachers and even bus drivers, he’s got a bus fan reputation. Maybe it’s from details like planning to wear his bus Halloween costume for the fourth time this fall.
He’s given it some thought and he’d like to drive a school bus. Someday.
“When I retire,” he said. First, Veilleux wants to be an architect.
“There was a picture on Google (of a bus) with a sign on the back, ‘Just Married.’ That’s going to be my limo.”
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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- Carter Veilleux, 12, of Turner has 93 buses in his collection.
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- Veilleux, a 7th-grader at Tripp Middle School in Turner, read 37 books over summer break this year.
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- Veilleux’s drawings of school buses hang above the desk in his bedroom. Carter’s Academy is written on the side of a few drawings.
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- Veilleux and his grandfather, Ron Landry, made a school bus in 2008 with the wood from a maple tree in Landry’s yard. The bus took between 40 and 50 hours to build.
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- School buses line up beneath Veilleux’s dresser in his room.
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