My Mt. Olive School
Remembering Mt. Olive School, aka Greenfield District School #5
Copyright Harris B. McKee
I enrolled at Mt. Olive school in September 1944. My dad took me on the back of our riding horse as the road was muddy that morning. I remember meeting my Uncle Wallace who was driving his car having already delivered my cousins, Miriam and Jean to the school. I also remember that I arrived without the appropriate books and workbooks that my two classmates, Jim Marks and Howard Hargis had. I guess that was a problem of being the first child in the family to arrive at the school and probably identified a characteristic of the country schools of the time that differed from the Des Moines schools where my mother had taught until she was married. We were expected to buy our books at the bookstore in Indianola. At the end of the year, they bought them back so we were really renting them but they were "our" books.
My transportation to school included, in addition to the horseback ride noted above during the next nine years (all-day primary plus first through eighth) walking the old abandoned road from Scotch Ridge, riding a horse alone, riding a bicycle, being driven in a car part-way, and driving a car myself when I reached age 14 and got my school permit.
Neither riding a horse to school nor bicycle riding was very satisfactory. Their wasn't any real place to tether the horse and I learned too late that he was considerably stronger than the fence posts to which I tied him. The bicycling was a problem because of the road surface. As far as the shaft coal mine, there had been shale spread which provided a fair all-weather surface.. This mine continued in operation until about 1948 or so. When it closed, the main east-west road was graveled. This surface was fine for autos but treacherous for biking.
The bike did provide some excitement. Marlyn Dash challenged me to race; we headed north from the school down a slight grade. I was in the lead when I learned disastrously about one of the features of the bike. It had a spring suspension in front for a smoother ride. Unfortunately, if you stood up and pumped, i.e. increasing the weight on the front and hit a bump, the springs would compress so much that the tire engaged the top of the fork and stopped turning. Of course, the bike didn't stop until it had rotated with rider around the front tire. Fortunately, I broke no bones and only suffered the embarrassment of losing the race.
Two major technological developments took place during my time at Mt. Olive. My father was the director of the school district my first two years and in that position arranged for installation of a telephone. This was the first telephone installed in any rural school in Warren County and took place two years before electrical power lines were run past the school. The power line installation was a little controversial because the power company cut down a row of huge maple trees that ran from the school to the property northern boundary. The school was lighted with fluorescent lights which seemed prone to burning out starters and needing maintenance.
In conjunction with getting electrical power, we got an oil heater with a fan which was positioned right in the center of our raised stage. I'm sure that we had much more uniform heat but from then on, we had to stage our plays on the east side of the school without any benefit of elevation.
During my last two years, we had a man-teacher, the only one in the county. He taught us all to sew in order to make the puppets that we created and proceeded to give shows not only at our school, but at several other schools in Greenfield township.
One annual event was the taking the Iowa tests. I don't remember any furor about the state of our scores and was never aware of any teaching to the test. Apparently they were used to determine the county honor roll when we graduated from eighth grade. (I was on the list.)
During the last two years at Mt. Olive, I had two classmates, Jim Marks and Sandy Houts. We had a unique math tutorial. About once a week we would have class with our teacher. Class consisted of our reporting our scores and getting a new assignment. On our own, we would then individually carry out the assignment and work all the problems. When we were all ready, we would borrow the answer book, exchange papers, and score our work..
Earlier, I had listened to the upper classes recite and heard them read such thrillers as Lorna Doone. Reading out-loud was definitely part of the curriculum. The teacher read to the school both at the beginning of school in the morning and just after lunch. One of the books was The Belgian Twins which including a recounting of some evacuations during World War I. I failed to distinguish that war from the one that was still underway and had some frightening nightmares shortly after.
On another occasion, I remember in second grade being sent to the vestibule to help another student, (I think that he was a third grader) with his reading.
The school had acquired a set of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedias. I read them voraciously when I had done my work. There were also several volumes of Norse and German fairy tales that I read. I never remembered any of the gods names but the gore was ample and probably not much less vivid in my mind than the fare that people now get worked up about from television.
One of the games we played that I have never observed elsewhere was a version of softball that we called Cross-out. We didn't have enough player to field two teams. Even with work-up our players weren't skillful enough to through runners out at base. So--in Cross-out, one only needed to throw the ball between the runner and the base toward which he (or she) was advancing. If the ball went behind him, it was treated like an over throw and he got one extra base.
We also had vigorous games of Red-light/Green-light beginning at the northwest corner of the school. Everyone lined up. On the command, "green-light", everyone began to move south as fast as they dared; the next command would be either "red-light" or "green-light". If it was "red-light", anyone caught advancing after the command would be returned to the starting point. With another "green-light" they could keep on going. When everyone had advanced around the
southwest corner of the building and were out of sight it became a game of hide-and-seek.
In the fall we played tackle football. That's where I learned to count by sixes. (We didn't have extra points.) The teams were divided to provide some semblance of balance; e.g. 3 biggest boys against everyone else. The only incident that I remember of broken bones was when we were having a "stop the rusher" contest where one person carried the ball and tried to run over everyone else. I brought Vernon Marks down (probably tripped him) and he broke his collar bone. Otherwise, noone was injured.