Nebraska has legislated its country schools into oblivion and thus many of its small towns. Efforts to prevent the final shovel on the grave are proceeding, futilely. This means certain hardships for, say, ranch families with young children. It has long been the practice of rural high schoolers to board in town during the school year or during bad weather: Mom did light housekeeping in exchange for her board and room through the week in Bloomfield (she graduated in 1933). Local control has been crucial for keeping rural families with grade schoolers intact and has had other social consequences. The schoolhouse within sight of the farm Up West, meaning the original Peters homestead north of Newport where both Grandma and Grandma and Earl and Audrey lived at different times, was not just for school programs and the annual end-of-the-year picnic but also for school board meetings (virtually all meetings are open to the public in Nebraska), card parties, reunions--important when towns were far away and hard to get to in bad weather. Of course, bureaucracies want their tyranny of centralized control, so much more efficient, particularly with technological advances, Orwellian Big Brother times. So everyone of every age must go to a centrally consolidated school now.
I was reminded of country schools when I had a brief note back from Vernon (Duke) Carlow, after I had sent him and his second wife birthday greetings on their joint 85th celebration, expressing his sympathy in JaVee's death and continuing that he had always liked our family, since Dad had been such a sportsman (Duke played baseball for Dad when Dad managed Center's town team and also pitched against us) and Mom was his first teacher at Cottonwood School east of Center a few miles. I have various snapshots of Mom with her pupils along the side of a schoolhouse or at the school picnic. I officially started school in Center but actually would go along with her, for she taught country school not only before I was born but for several years after and much later took health and safety films around for the County Superintendent's office. That's one of the reasons I learned to read so early and, according to the Zieglers, could write my name upside down and backwards on the blackboard as a pre-schooler. Country schools were excellent for the younger children, exposed to all the grades above them in one big room where privacy or solitude didn't exist. Of course, seldom were there children in each of the eight grades, but still the younger ones had to listen to the rest just as the older ones had to listen to the starters. Teachers couldn't specialize, like their pupils becoming generalists perforce, and, knowing the whole room was a captive audience, could capitalize on that, not just in matters of discipline. Education was mandatory through the eighth grade--or the age 16--which could be tricky with farm boys who had to drop out to help their dads or were slow, meaning that the teacher had everyone from six-year-olds to teenagers. Dad had to quit school after the eighth grade to hire out in order to support his family, his father a drunk and gambler, though he clearly had the grades and the imagination and intelligence to have gone on, I'm sure. One of those proofs is a sleek automobile design, his idea of the future car, when he was Grandma and Grandpa Koftan's hired man. His story wasn't that unusual in the Twenties and Thirties.
But back to country schools. I actually went to Mom only in my sixth grade year, so I have just a year's actual experience, though I did go along with her at times before and after. The two most distinctive memories I have are the smell and the activities. A country school always has an anteroom at its front door with benches and wall hooks for coats, a big water cooler with spigot, a washstand with enamel basin, towel, and soap. Lunch pails were under the benches where the pupils sat to pull off or put on overshoes or caps, scarfs, coats. While there was a general lunchroom aroma, mostly it was oranges, whole or peeled, their zest perfuming that little room indelibly.
As for activities, no shirkers out there in the outdoors. The only way to play ball was if everyone played, and the same went for other recess games, second graders teamed up with fifth graders, all kinds of unlikely combinations--again, undoubtedly helpful, if stressful, for the younger ones. Fox and geese in the snow or ante-i-over (supposedly named for the school's anteroom) or hide and seek aren't really age discriminatory. The weather had to be really bad before we stayed inside. The country schools had area track meets that culminated in the county track meet, a very Big Deal, usually held in Center, with such events as the ball throw, the three-legged race, and the high jump, the three I won in the preliminary round to get me to Center. We all had to practice all of the exercises, the long jump, the dash, whether we were winners or not. Consequently, I was probably in the best shape that year ever out of my whole grade school experience.
The teacher's job was very difficult and the pay poor. Mom drove daily, for the schools were generally within six to ten miles, but I can't remember what happened in the bad rains or the blizzards except that tractors were always crucial in our area--any rural area--as proved at the end of this April when my cousins high-centered themselves on a bottomless unmaintained sand road and my nephew had to pull them out with my brother-in-law's tractor. Anyway, Mom had to be the janitor, cleaning and sweeping the building, washing the windows and their curtains, starting the fire in the coal or oil stove in the morning, seeing that the outhouses had toilet paper. Anything that needed fixing she did, like door hinges or broken window panes. There was no electricity, so kerosene lamps were on wall sconces with metal plate reflectors (like pie plates) and had to be filled for gloomy days or the rare night occasions like the Christmas program. The big ceramic water cooler with spigot for drinking had to be filled from the pump in the schoolyard. (I don't remember any inside pumps in the anteroom, though I remember the washstand with its metal basin, towels, soap.) She was the school nurse, taking care of any injuries; the school scientist, identifying the snake in the yard or the birds nesting in the toilet or using the schoolyard or nearby farm for handy field trips. Schools didn't have telephones, but all the nearby farms did for emergencies. She handled the PR, sending out notices to the families; the art teacher, maintaining the cutouts decorating the many windows and the area above the blackboards, hectographing off coloring pictures for the lower grades.
NOTE: The hectograph was the copy machine of the time, a gelatin mat on which hectograph ink designs or writing could be imprinted, so copies could be pressed off until the ink wore away. The Internet has various recipes for making one's own and outlets to buy the special iridescent ink. Mom usually had at least two, 8 1/2 X 11, also requiring a wet sponge to moisten the paper for copying.
She had to make sure all the children had supplies, even if she occasionally had to buy a box of crayons for someone too poor to afford them. She was musical, so at least her pupils knew how to sing, and she planned and prepared her own programs for holidays, especially the Christmas program. That required some extra preparation, treats for all the children, sometimes for the patrons, a special staging area set off by a wire or rope with sheets as curtains, the backstage being the anteroom of the orange zestiness, a visit by Santa Claus as the climax. Students practiced their individual pieces, songs, and little playlets for weeks before so that everyone knew everyone else's piece or part, sometimes leading to unpredictable cuing for the forgetful, say, a second grader hissing the word the sixth grader was stumped on. I don't know who supplied the Christmas tree or decorations, but I think the local scratchy eastern redcedar tree was cut or someone contributed a store-bought tree, because I remember school boards as being very stingy, for Mom worked in her first years for $35-$40 a month, if I recall one of her early letter contracts. She definitely earned her meager pay!
I was one of the little ones benefiting from listening to and learning from the older pupils when I was very young, three on, though I mostly stayed at home with a babysitter-housekeeper of sorts in my first years. In my sixth grade when I went to Northview with her, I naturally became part of the help, cleaning erasers, cleaning off the hectograph ink, sweeping, dusting, washing, emptying the wastebaskets, all the usual chores. On lucky nights I got to leave early to start walking home with the Poppes, two families who lived a couple miles along the road, Mom picking me up in the car then. It was one of my better years.
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