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.