My Grandmother's School

It was 1866 and quite a little scary for Isabel Schooler. The Civil War had ended only a year earlier, but that wasn’t the scary part. What was scary were the Indians! Indians riding by the one room country school one mile from Belle’s home. Her home was close to the new Scotch Ridge Church and store at Scotch Ridge, but the school seemed remote. And the Indians were riding by. It didn’t seem very long since the 1857 Spirit Lake Massacre when Indians in northern Iowa had shot and bludgeoned settlers even their babies in their homes.

It was 1944 and quite a little scary for Harris McKee though the scare happened after school began. The first day of school was a muddy morning, so muddy a morning that Harris rode to school on the back of Moka behind his dad who happened to be the school board director for Greenfield Township School #5, still known as Mt Olive. as it had been 80 years earlier. On the way, they met Uncle Wallace returning from dropping off Miriam and Jean. Wallace was in his company car, a Ford with mud tires. He probably also knew that he could get all the way to the coal mine before letting the girls walk the last quarter mile. Harris’ dad undoubtedly wanted to get him all the way to the school and that last muddy quarter mile would have been impossible in the 1940 Chevrolet. Living on Highway 65-69 meant that they hadn’t needed mud tires. The primary class included three boys, Howard Hargis, James Marks, and Harris. These three would graduate from Indianola High School in 1957 although Howard left Mt. Olive for Gunning, another country school. Jim was the first member of the class of 1957 to die.

Eighty years and little had changed. The row of stately silver maples along the road had grown to mammoth proportions. Little else was different. The road was mud. PTA meetings, always held on a Friday evening were lighted with kerosene lamps around the outer walls and one Coleman white gas lantern with two brightly glowing mantles hung down from the center of the room. The coal and wood stove with its protective, radiative shell stood in the northwest corner of the “main” floor leaving the raised stage across the whole width of the room. Generations of teachers included the care of this stove part of their daily duties; careful banking the fire before leaving in the evening meant that the start up in the morning could be from the coals and not from scratch. The samples of Palmer writing on cards above the blackboard could not have been there for Belle because Mr. Palmer was born in the same December of 1860 as she; suffice it to say, however, that they were not new. The teacher lived with the Marks’ family who lived closest to the school. Somehow she got home on weekends to her family in Garden Grove 55 miles south of the school. By living so close to the school, it meant that “snow-days” did not exist. No weather was so severe that school could not be held!

It was called a one room school because there was a single room for all of the instruction for nine grades that included an all-day primary[1]. There actually were four rooms divided from each other by doors and walls. There were separate cloak rooms for the boys and girls to hand up their coats and leave their lunches. The entry way or vestibule was also closed off but it held the water fountain, filled from the well about 20 or 30 feet from the front steps. There was a sink with a drain that carried off the water not ingested from the porcelain bubbler. Since there was no septic tank, it’s not clear where this drain water went; perhaps just into the crawl space below the building. The fifth and last room was the coal bin, a separate room appended on the north side of the school and about half the width of the school.

Sharing the room with the other grades was very educational. Hearing the eighth graders report on Lorna Doone was as good as being able to read. Two features of the day also enhanced appreciation of books and reading. In the morning, the first twenty minutes or so were from the bible. The afternoon began with similar reading from a book. This listening to the books read out loud was an early predecessor of Michigan State Public Radio’s Dick Estell. It also contributed to the scary situation mentioned above. In the fall of 1944, one of the books that was read was The Belgian Twins” by Lucy Fitch Perkins who wrote a whole series of Twins books. The Belgian Twins was actually recommended or use with first graders but in 1944 it was a terrifying story. The twins were about the age of first graders and were refugees fleeing the invading Germans. Harris knew that there was a war with Germany; He also knew that there were homeless people. But he did not know that Ms Fitch was writing about World War I. He fully expected that the little group at Mt. Olive would be the next refugees. He was too frightened to share his fear and only became aware of the discrepancy between WWI and WWII later.

One change that year provided a first for the school and for any rural school in Warren County. Harris’ dad had a telephone installed. There was still no electricity but the school was now less remote.

More change was coming but not for three years. When Harris was in the third grade, the power company installed a line past the school[2]. Power for the school came at great ecological cost in that day before the green movement had begun. The then current school director, Roland Marks, permitted the power company to cut down every one of the maples at the ground. He said that future safety of the power company line crews was worth the sacrifice; not all agreed. The florescent lights that were installed provided great light, a real benefit on gloomy midwinter days. The starters proved unreliable, however, and blinking as well as unlighted bulbs were common. The forced air oil heater meant that no longer were coats required during the early morning while waiting for the stove to heat the room. Some observers lamented that the heater had been placed exactly at the center of the stage. This location meant that all later plays were positioned not on the stage but on the east side of the room. Such plays produced about three times a year gave nearly all the students the opportunity to act from the youngest to the oldest. The teacher, older than the first years’ teacher, married during her tenure and commuted from Indianola rather than continue to room at the Marks.

[1] The primary year was sufficiently advanced that students completing a year of primary often were advanced to 2^nd grade in town school because they had learned to read.

[2] It’s interesting to see how economics drove the power availability. The coal mine, a quarter mile away had had power for years! While the line past the school was not an REA line, without the REA movement, more years would probably have passed without electric power for the school and farms.

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