Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers

Chapter 8 Getting to and from School

Chapter 8 Getting to and from School Traveling to and from school could be quite an adventure, sometimes even dangerous. Rural schoolhouses were typically in remote areas, and teachers and students alike often had to travel miles to reach them, frequently along muddy roads or across swollen creeks. Feet, mules, horses, cars, and the helpful arms or backs of other people served as means of transportation in the stories that follow. Air-conditioned Jenny This has to do with the time when I attended the Merryville rural [oneroom ] school. I started as a student there in 1925 and 1926. My brother and I went to Merryville School, and our sister Betty Jane did too. When I was in the third or fourth grade, my dad decided that we ought to ride to school, so he bought a jenny from Raymond Bray for five dollars! A jenny is a female donkey, and we’d put a big saddle on that jenny. My dad would catch that jenny of a morning, put the saddle on it, then we’d get up in that saddle and ride the jenny to school. That jenny had three rates. It was slow, slower, and slowest. [Laughter ] You could whip it with a stick, but it wouldn’t go any faster. It had big ears that flopped and a long tail. We were the only kids that had free transportation to school at that. Another thing I’d like to point out is that that transportation was air-conditioned! [Laughter] I’ll never forget that. But we grew up and got to the point that we wouldn’t help take care of that jenny, so our daddy sold it for $7.50. He made some profit on it and that helped get our education. J. Robert Miller, Rock Bridge, September 18, 2008 Getting to and from School 179 Helpful, Caring Brothers When I went to Hamilton School I had four brothers but no sister, so my brothers looked after me on the way to school. When we got to the little stream that crossed the road, it would get muddy on some days. My brothers would put on their hip boots and carry me across the stream on their backs. Mamie Wright, Tompkinsville, October 16, 2008 Musical Mule When it rained a lot one low place in the road got flooded. Once the water got so high that our neighbor was generous enough to carry us across the water on his mule. He would place as many of us on the old mule’s back as there was room for. Of course, the old mule was so heavily loaded he “played music” [with his bowels] as he moped along. Laura Agnes Townsley Stacy, Barbourville, November 21, 2008 Teacher’s Travels and Travails The first year I taught at Gregory, my brother was in the eighth grade there, along with an eighth-grade boy who was my neighbor. Well, he had a bicycle, and my other brother also had a bicycle, so we rode a bicycle two and one-half miles to school. One day it had rained, and we lived on this country road. The water was standing on the road in ditches. On our way home, I was riding on the bicycle behind my brother, as I didn’t ride my bicycle at that time. Well, the bike scooted off the road, and we fell on our backs right over into a mud hole! I walked the rest of the time, but when I started teaching at Big Sinking School, my husband got me an old truck. . . . The road up there was bad, jumpy, and rocky. I got up there alright by jumping the truck up and down over rocks. One of my neighbors went to school up there, and he rode with me up there and back. Well, one day it came a big rain; rained just about all day. I never thought about Big Sinking Creek getting up high, so we 180 Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers got back down there to the creek to cross it. But before we got there, we saw this big board laying out on the road, and we stopped and got out to see what it was. Well, it was a board that had nails all in it. We went on down to cross the creek, and it was up high and really...