When Horses Pulled the Plow: Life of a Wisconsin Farm Boy, 1910–1929

9. Country School and High School

115 Country School and High School Icompleted grades one through eight at the country school, Cox School District No. 2, located about one mile from our farm. I started at the age of six in the spring of 1916, about two months before the end of the term. I have never forgotten my first day of school. The teacher put me at a desk on one side of the room near the front and gave me a reading book to look at. I started to turn the pages and, as I came to one page, called out, “See the rabbit run up the page.” Immediately, the teacher came over to tell me that I couldn’t talk out like that in school. This was not my first experience at this school. When I was perhaps four, someone arranged to have me give a recitation at the Christmas program. My mother and I sat in the first row in front of the stage (a platform raised about twelve inches above floor level). As the other children did their parts, I was much more intrigued by the fireplace (make-believe) at the back of the stage than I was interested in the singing and performances of the children. When my name was called to do my recitation, I immediately got on the stage, walked to the back, and got on my knees trying to look up the “fireplace” chimney to see Santa Claus. That the audience burst into laughter 9 116 did not concern me. My mother finally persuaded me to come back to the front of the stage to recite my piece. It was: “Here I stand just three feet high, hooray for Christmas and the Fourth of July!” There was one other child, a boy, in the first grade. Before the school year ended, he died of diphtheria. The schoolhouse was closed to be fumigated, I was told. I did not understand what that meant. The Schoolhouse and Grounds The schoolhouse was a one-room, one-story building of yellow brick. It had a high ceiling, no basement. A few years after I started, an entryway of wood was added across the front. The schoolhouse had two doors at the front, only one of which was used. There were three windows on either side. Each corner at the back of the room had a built-in cupboard, one of which held chunks of wood for the wood-burning stove. A blackboard ran across the entire front of the room. The teacher’s desk was in front. She faced five rows of desks for the students. The center row had double-desks. Every desk had an inkwell, and under the top there was storage space for books, paper, and pencils. Three kerosene lamps were attached to the wall on each side of the room; these were used only when there was an event at night. A small bookcase was in one corner in the front; its shelves were not filled. Two large pictures hung on one wall, one of George Washington, the other of Abraham Lincoln. When the entry was added, the children put their coats, rubbers, overshoes, and such there. The water pail, later a water fountain, was also in the entry, along with the drinking glass each child was supposed to have and a wash basin. I don’t recall that the wash basin got much use. Country School and High School 117 Outside were a large woodshed and two outhouses, one for boys and one for girls. Those buildings were painted red. There was playground space in front of and on both sides of the school. At the back and along one side of the playground were a few shade trees. The only equipment was a homemade swing hung from the branch of a tree and a couple of baseball bats and balls. I do not recall that there was a flagpole. An elected school board of three men, all farmers, hired the teacher and paid her salary from tax money collected for school purposes. In the fall, before school started, one of them mowed the grass and weeds that had grown on the grounds during the summer. They saw that a supply of wood was in the woodshed each fall for the stove. Before the Christmas program, they brought materials from their farms to build the stage for the program. One of the school board...