Stories from a Life #6

One Room School (Part 2)

 

   This little school,  District 21, Lake Sinai Township, Brookings County, SD, was on a hill.   The hill doesn't look very big now but as students we really enjoyed it.  It gave us a good place to use our sleds during the winter, running as fast as we could we would slam down on our sleds and go for a ride.

   The school ground was ringed by a double row of fir trees which my father, no doubt, helped to plant.  They proved great hiding for games of hide and seek.  The also created great snow banks in winter blizzards which were fun to play on.  Below the hill was a ball diamond where we played baseball.  Also, below the hill was a small stable to keep the horses students/teachers rode to school.  No one was riding to school in my memory (though one family who lived almost 3 miles from school drove a car, a 1928 Whippet)  so the stable was torn down and the lumber used to construct a backstop for baseball.  There were three outbuildings on top of the hill; out houses for boys and girls and a coal shed.

   Play ground equipment was minimal.   There was a double teeter totter which had an extended elevation of about six feet.   A home made merry ground swing was the only other item.   An old, spoked, car wheel was mounted on a steel post about ten feet high.  Chains had been hung from the wheel extending to a child height.  At a child's level wood bars were fixed to the chains to grasp.  Holding the wood bars students could run, lift their legs and swing in a circle.  The fun was limited by the amount of time one would want to hang by his/her arms.

    Free time, two fifteen minute recesses morning and afternoon and lunch hour, after lunches eaten at our desk were almost always used for group games; kick the can, pump pump pull away, hide and seek, baseball, fox and goose, tag, anti over and sledding when the snow was right.  We had one baseball and if was lost in the tall grass over the fence the game recessed until the ball was found.  Sometimes we resorted to rolling in the grass to find the ball.

    When recess or lunch hour was over the teacher, or a favored student, would recall us to classes with a brass hand bell.  I wonder if I heard it today if it would match the sound that rings in my memory?

 

  

Stories from a Life #5

                                                 One Room Country School, Part I

   At the time it didn't seem romantic...it was all we knew.   It was the school attended by my father and his three siblings, two of my cousins, where my mother taught and where my three siblings and I attended for 8 years apiece.  It was very small, though when I started in the first grade it seemed large.  There were three windows each on the east and west sides and an entry room on the south where we kept our lunches, coats and overshoes.
   There were three rows of desks attached to wood runners so that they could be moved a bit.  The bigger desks were in back for the older students and the teacher's desk was in front.  Pictures of Washington, you know the one that looks like he's rising from a white cloud, and Lincoln were hung high on the walls.  Two metal lockers at the back served as a library.  A globe was hung by rope and pulley in a front corner. Black boards were affixed to the side and front walls.  A wind up Regulator clock hung on the front wall.  A sand table was one of the few teaching aids.  On a side shelf was a ceramic crock of drinking water.   Water came from a cistern filled by run off from the roof.  In the front left corner stood the stove.   Until 4th grade it was a coal stove which the teacher had to fire every morning.  It was replaced by an oil burner which could be left on all night meaning that there was at least a little residual heat in the room when school opened in the morning.  On the coldest days our lunches in the entry would freeze by noon.  Before I started school it had been electrified which meant that there were three light bulbs hanging from the ceiling and that the fan on the oil burner could help circulate the heat.  I do not remember any other electrical appliances.  There was no telephone.
   Attendance was usually about twelve students in grades 1-8.  Our teachers were not college graduates but they had attended college for a year or two.   There were four students in my grade, one girl and three boys through grade four.  When we were in fifth grade the girl transferred to Arlington public school.  The three of us boys finished the 8th grade together and also graduated from high school together.
   I was five years old when I started, having a late October birthday.  I walked the mile with my siblings.  Because of our ages I had three siblings in school for two years, then two for another two years, then one for two years and then none my last two years.
   (To be con't.)
  A late addition;  I forgot to mention that most available wall space was covered with blackboards and that there was a map case hanging high on the wall.  The maps were rolled on dowels that were spring loaded like roll up window shades.  There was a long stick with a hook on the end used to reach up and pull down a map.   Our 4th grade teacher used to hit us with the stick until it was mysteriously cut up during a 4H meeting.