SEEKONK - Wedged between roaring Route 195 and a Ramada Inn is a dusty lot where school buses wait to die.

Once, before someone decided they were too old, before school let out forever, these rusted hulks stole out in the morning darkness to fill up with rowdy kids and their sticky chewing gum.

Only the wind whistles through them now. Their eight-cylinder engines are missing. Their headlights and taillights are gone. A man named Bud cares for them now, when he can. But he knows the day is coming when the buses will have to go.

“From here, they end up scrap,” said Bud Saunders, who took over the Saunders Sales and Service business on Newman Avenue from his father, Bruce, who took it over from his grandfather, Edward Burnett Saunders. “They end up becoming Toyotas or whatever. After they recycle them, crush them down, melt them — whatever they do.”

Bud Saunders isn't planning a funeral. The buses aren't much to look at. They are good for storing motors and spark plugs — no taxes on them either, unlike a new building — that's it. And he's not the crying type. “No,” he said, “I don't really get emotionally attached to them or anything like that.”

But when the scrapper finally has its way with the buses, it will be the end of more than steel and rubber. A way of life is changing.

Replacing it, in Saunders's case, is the lucrative sale and repair of high-tech Weed-Whackers, chain saws and small tractors. The kind of equipment for which he sends employees to technical seminars.

Some town officials won't shed a tear when the buses are gone. They're more likely to see it as a collection of junked buses in the growing Route 6 commercial area, where Target and other “big-box” stores are taking over. Saunders knows, and said he is working with officials to eventually send the buses away. Other people probably won't notice either way, going about their busy days on Route 6 or speeding past on Route 195.

“That's the funny thing,” Saunders said. “People drive by for years and years and years and say, 'Oh, I never even knew you were there.' ”

ONCE, SEEKONK had farmers. And the farmers had trucks. And the trucks needed repairs.

So while the nation asked men like Edward Burnett Saunders - Bud's grandfather — to serve in World War II, town officials asked him to sit the war out.

“He was all set to go, and some selectmen realized he was the only guy in town who could fix anything,” Bud Saunders recalled. “They said, 'Nope, you're not going to war.' ”

Bud's father remembered some of the old drivers. The town's first bus driver was a woman, in the 1920s, whom Bruce Saunders knew simply as “Mrs. Sutcliffe.” After World War II, there was Jerry Fagundes, who kept a very tidy bus.

“He's gone now,” said Bruce Saunders. “All the originals are gone.”

“Years ago,” he added, “it was like a big family, it was enjoyable.”

In the 1950s, Edward Saunders became a dealer for International Harvester, which made trucks and buses. He also maintained the Seekonk school system's buses.

Along came school bus 18. It's still there today, with red light fixtures jutting outward, adopting the gentler, bubbly lines of 1950s cars. The bus seems rounder, less boxy. Look past the weeds growing out of it now, and you can almost see the bobby-socksers and greasers holding court on the bus, talking about Elvis and football games.

Take a few steps to the right, and jump to the early 1970s, a time of upheaval and social change. The blue-and-white International Harvester school bus is equipped with a hydraulic lifter. Bud Saunders thought the lift might have been to accommodate people with disabilities.

It proved useful to an antique store owner who lived not far from the Saunderses — perfect for hauling heavy pieces to shows around the country, he said.

“I think there were some bunks made in there so the guy could sleep in it, too,” he said.

These days, the bus holds small engines and other parts from Saunders's days racing tractors. In the early 1990s, Bud Saunders jazzed up the machines, changing the gear ratios to turn a tractor into a race car. He raced with other locals around a dirt track in Rehoboth.

Like the buses, the racing is history.

The most useful bus in Saunders' outdoor showroom is arguably Number 20.

Built in the 1970s, it has the functional appearance people are used to today — flat and unremarkable, with red light fixtures and boxy lines. This baby's about economy and space.

Bud Saunders has made some special modifications. He got rid of the old emergency door in back and installed a wood door that opens out, like one on a barn. He installed two long shelves inside, sending the old vinyl seats to an early death. Instead of little kids, little bags of engine parts wait inside.

“You can put shelves on either side,” he said, “and have an aisle right down the middle. It beats putting up a building.”