One room school

After getting up and watching the market go down more than 500 points I thought I would write about more fun times.

When I started school I went to a one room school house in Iowa. It seemed like a big place as a five year old kid. But it was about the size of our current living room, kitchen, and family room. It had a enclosed porch, and a coal room in the back to store large black chunks of coal for heating. And two out houses one for girls and one for boys. Complete with the latest Sears catalog for you know what. A swing set with three swings for recces. In the back of the main room was a large round stove for heating. In the front was a raised platform a recitation bench, black broad and the teachers desk. There were several rows of desks starting with small ones on the right when facing the classes to progressively larger ones to the left.

The single picture of me was when I was in first grade I could not find my kindergarten picture. The picture above right was taken outside of the school when I was in second grade. And the one below was when I was in fifth grade. The school was for kids from Kindergarten through 8th grade. We had one teacher for the whole school. She did everything needed, lighting the stove in winter for heat or opening the windows in Spring and Fall for cooling. Cleaning, and of course teaching all the grades. I had the same teacher Mrs A for years k - 4th. We got a new teacher when I was in 5th grade. I think Mrs A retired.

Getting to school was accomplished by walking. It was not too far about 3/4 of a mile. I walked with the neighbor kids from the farm down the road. You carried your lunch in a lunch pail. It could be kind of cold in the winter but my mom always bundled me up very well. As a farm kid one of the things that showed the difference between being a little kid and a big kid in school was your overshoes. As a little kid you wore three buckle black overshoes. And when you got to be a big kid, it meant your dad let you drive the tractor by yourself like around ten and five buckle overshoes. Don't ask why that was such a big deal but I can tell you I was so happy when mom said I could get five buckle overshoes, I had arrived. The other big thing was jeans vs overalls. As you can see in my second grade class I was in overalls. And I hated it. We were the class on our knees in the first row. By fifth I had graduated to jeans with a belt and of course those precious overshoes.

I did not think much about being the largest class in the school until the other day while riding the bike. I was born in 1946 the start of the Baby Boom.

My earliest memory of school was Kindergarten and the little play area in the corner behind our desks. All I remember was it was enclosed with a low wall and had a great toy tractor with a front loader that could you could pick up the shelled field corn and put it in a little toy wagon. The girls had some dolls to play with. Boys did not play with dolls.

The other big memory was learning to read and math. The first book we read from was the Dick and Jane books and I was fairly good. But I still remember setting on the long recitation bench and looking ahead as we went down the line reading our page. And just hoping that Mrs A did not change the order of who she called on. Hated when that happened. The other big thing was doing math on the black board. That one you could not make a good guess of what you would be doing and practice while awaiting your turn. You just had to set there and watch your friends do well or struggle as Mrs A wrote an addition, subtraction, multiplication or fraction problem on the board.
And called some poor kid in your class to come up and solve it. I can still remember going over those multiplication tables in my head 6*6 = 36 etc. How do I carry a number. Do I turn that fraction over to multiply or is that dividing fractions. It was stressful as a kid. But math and reading I did OK. Spelling was another story.

Enough for now. Maybe I should do a Recess blog. Later the bike is calling.