Twice-Told Tale Close As Can Be, The Krulitz Twins Keep The Silver Valley’s School Buses Running

On mornings when snow has filled the Silver Valley’s narrow canyons, twin brothers Art and Kerby Krulitz return before dawn from runnin’ roads.

Between 3 and 5 a.m., Art tunes his truck radio to 99.9 easy listening and drives the washboard back roads that threaten to shake the rivets out of his older buses.

At the same time, Kerby’s squeezing by logging trucks on his way over Dobson Pass to make sure the bus will make it through from Prichard and Murray.

Kerby is in charge of 18 buses as bus supervisor at Wallace School District. His fraternal twin, Art, oversees 29 buses as bus supervisor at the Kellogg School District.

For more than a decade, the two dedicated brothers have held the Silver Valley school buses together.

“Bookends, I guess,” said Kerby.

It’s sheer coincidence how the twins ended up in identical jobs just eight miles apart near the small mining town where they grew up.

“We get asked that question all the time,” Art said. “How did that happen?”

“I’m not superstitious. But it is funny how things have paralleled.”

The sons of a carpenter, the Krulitz brothers, who are 50, grew up packin’ boards and poundin’ nails back when Mullan had two soda fountains and the only thing green in town was money in miner’s pockets.

Occasionally, they would help repair cars at their uncle’s service station. As seniors, the 6-foot, 4-inch twins helped Mullan’s basketball team win a state title in 1965. They still team up against other towns, but now it’s on the bench, team-coaching Wallace’s junior varsity and varsity girls basketball teams.

After high school, both enrolled in the mechanics program at North Idaho College, coming home to work in the mines at Christmas and spring break. Once, Kerby carried the body of a good friend out after he’d been killed in a cave-in. There was good money to be made in mining, but neither fancied a future there, Kerby recalls.

“Miners that go underground, that’s dangerous,” he said. “It’s hard on your health and really, for all the years you work for a mining company, you can’t even live on the retirement.”

The two decided instead to go into the Air Force, where they hoped to get stationed as auto mechanics. Instead they were involuntarily placed in the missile mechanics field. Military policy at the time allowed twins to be kept together. So for four years, Art and Kerby worked side-by-side assembling and dismantling 50-foot-long nuclear ground-to-air missiles.

When they returned to the Silver Valley, Art found work as a diesel mechanic at Bunker Hill, and Kerby found similar work for Shoshone County. Later, both went into business, but they got out when the mining industry began to shut down, making it hard for customers to pay car repair bills.

In the early ‘80s, both managed to land jobs as mechanics, Art for Kellogg School District and Kerby for Wallace.

Kerby’s supervisor stepped down a few years later, opening up the position to him. Like clockwork, the same happened for Art not long after.

Kellogg’s school district is twice as big as Wallace’s, so Art has hired more mechanics. As his paperwork has increased over the years, he’s gotten his hands less dirty.

But Kerby is Wallace’s bus supervisor and only mechanic. He works daily on the 210-horsepower engines in the heated bus barn that smells like diesel.

The huge engines are the same size as ones in 18-wheelers.

“With cars anymore, you don’t even have room to get your hands in there,” Kerby said as he tinkered under the engine. “Here, everything is so big, it is right out in the open. It’s simpler.”

In the Silver Valley, bus drivers log up to 145,000 miles a year. The districts get a new bus every 10 years, but with religious maintenance, they can last a lot longer. One Wallace bus - the Dinosaur - was bought in 1983 and still runs well.

“They’re built like Sherman tanks. It’s amazing the punishment they can take.”

It’s not just bus bodies that take a beating.

“I have aches and pains when I get up to do things,” Kerby said. “but I wouldn’t want to be anything else than a mechanic.

“If you can get a job with benefits in the valley, you don’t want to leave.”

“We are all guilty of oversimplifying a person’s job,” Art said. “But unless you’ve walked in that person’s shoes, you don’t know what it’s like.

Cooperative agreements between Wallace and Kellogg districts have made it easy for the brothers to do just that. They fill in for each other on occasion, not just at work but on the street, where townspeople still mistake them for each other.

“If they say ‘Hi Kerby,’ I’ll say hi,” Art said. “But if they’re going to stop and get into a conversation, then you have to tell them.”

In Wallace, the two still get their share of twin jokes, which they laugh off with a grin and some clever comeback.

“I’m a homesteader, and I like the valley,” Art explained. “We came back and never regretted it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 color photos