The Best Little Schoolhouse in Lincoln: Jt. District #4

Rural schools were something about which I knew little. Living in the city, I went to a city elementary school and only found out about the rural schools when Mom returned to teaching. As a married woman with young children, she had no intention of teaching, but the male teacher in a one room school had what was called a nervous breakdown and the school was closed for lack of a teacher. Knowing Mom was a teacher, the county superintendent asked her to fill in until a long term teacher could be found. Filling in continued for decades!

The first time I ever saw all 8 grades in one room was the first time that I had a day off and got to go to Mom’s school. It was filled with the nicest kids ever. Not because I was Teacher’s daughter; they were just nice kids. The school was beyond my expectations.  It had a stage on one side of the classroom and a whole side room for a library. That library also had a dipper and pail until the day sanitation came in the guise of a huge canister with a bubbler attached. Water pumped outdoors into a pail was brought in and poured into the canister. Most rural schools had outhouses, but this one was modern with basement pit toilets. The pit toilets didn’t flush, however they didn’t smell  nearly as bad as outhouses. The toilets were in the girls’ or the boys’ basements, which had poured walls and a concrete floor offering a place to play in inclement weather. With a separate room for a library and all those books, the pit toilets weren’t a bad trade off. And the stage? It was flanked by the girls’ cloakroom, with the girls’ basement underneath, and a storage area as big as the cloakroom. There was plenty of room for kids to keep themselves, props and scenery out of sight for the yearly Christmas play and any other production they did. Our family went to the Christmas programs and enjoyed it as much as anybody. The programs' end brought squealing with all the clapping as that’s when Santa showed up with bags of  peanuts, candy canes, oranges and pencils for all the kids, 8^th graders, 1^st graders and all in between. Mom bought huge bags of peanuts and it was my job at home to carefully measure the cups of peanuts into each bag. Carelessness was sure to cause a problem. Programs were always big social events at rural schools and the small buildings were packed. Proud parents crammed into those desks, sat on the recitation chairs or stood to watch those programs in a stifling schoolroom on a cold December evening.

Years later when I had my own classroom, I realized it was no small wonder that desks I thought were so cool in Mom's school didn’t seriously injure the occupants. The seats had the writing surface attached to the right elbow, ensuring a real problem for lefties. Under the seat was a storage drawer that could be pulled out by leaning over the left arm of the seat. With the drawer full of textbooks and all the weight going left, desks easily tipped over, bringing uproarious laughter, embarrassment and sometimes a whack on the head.

Mom eventually taught closer to home and was on a village faculty when I graduated from college. I’d done some of my student teaching in that school and knew the faculty and many of the families. When the principal offered me a job, I jumped at the opportunity. I didn’t even have to go through an application process.  It wasn’t going to be teaching one grade though. Jt. District #4 had joined the village system and Grades 6, 7 and 8 were transported. The other five grades remained in the former district school because the village building lacked space for another 30 kids. Teaching in that school - seven miles from home - was the best job I ever had.  Hardworking, cheerful kids surely got their personalities from their folks, most of whom were farmers, some of which also “worked out.” Teaching five grades was challenging, but surely some of the most fun I ever had in the classroom with kids I could never, ever forget.

My goal had been to major in history and English and minor in music, however it was financially advantageous to enter a nearby college so I could live at home and continue a part time job. When I transferred I was hooked on reading and phonics while being scoffed at by friends who went on to physics, chemistry and math. It was because of people like me that those physics and chemistry teachers had students who could read the text books! My kids learned a lot of U.S. history, I read Shakespeare written for children and they learned the patriotic songs of George M. Cohen along with Smoky the Bear and all the little ditties we made up to go with diphthongs, digraphs, plain old "short A" and more. It was the best of both worlds.

Each day was an adventure bringing story after story to the family dinner table. Mom told me to capture the moments in my plan book. She said there would be so many I’d forget, but I never did. Fifty years later I am still laughing.

The kids in the best little schoolhouse anywhere!

One boy’s favorite song was The Little Brown Church by the Plywood, known by others as The Little Brown Church in the Wildwood. Whoever heard of “the wildwood?” His dad and about one thousand others worked at the Plywood. One kid thought he was good at mountain climbing but not goezinta. Some would call it multiplying and dividing, as in 7 goes into 14 to equal 2. He and his brother were nature lovers who took joy in spiders and everything else. The joy he took in a close up look at a skunk kept him out of school for a few days. “Slow as molasses” described another kid who was really perfection personified. Working slowly and methodically, he never made an error on anything in the two years I knew him. He wanted to help with classroom tasks that he rarely finished, however everybody knew what he did because it was perfect. I have yet to meet another who never made a mistake in an assignmentn or anything else. A neat kid who never lorded it over anybody.

Social studies had the requisite community helpers’ curriculum but the hamlet’s only service providers were  the doctor, the cattle breeder and bar keeper. Another making an impact on their lives was the bulk tank gas delivery man. Curriculum called for pictures compiled into a stapled book. One child scribbled his 11 x 17” paper totally green with a red dot in the center, surely not an acceptable picture, so I asked about it. He told me it was the Cities Service man. Restraining myself was not easy. Then I asked about the red dot and  was told it was an embarrassed Cities Service man. I fled to the hall in a flash, just cracking up. The bulk man with his ruddy complexion  who always wore his green Cities Service regulation uniform was my boyfriend’s dad, but the kids didn’t know that. The little girls must have been trying to marry me off though. Periodically some man would stop with books or for some other reason. If a man drove up when the kids were outside, the girls were sure to run in to tell me there was a cute man outside and wouldn't I like to put on lipstick and comb my hair!

Most of the kids played baseball during any recess when there wasn’t snow. When I played,which was often, I was the catcher and the ref. After so much complaining about my calls, I painted 2^nd base orange. Winter brought ice to a small pond in a neighboring field. Somebody built a stile so it would be easy for the kids to get over and skate. That wouldn’t happen today. Neither would catching frogs in the creek in the ditch that ran along the schoolyard property. The boys wanted to fry frog legs. My city up-bringing didn’t include that, and they told me they’d take care of everything if I’d bring a pound of butter.  In today’s world intermediate boys – nor anybody else – would ever be allowed to catch frogs, clean them and freeze the legs in the school freezer until there were enough for the class. School had a hotplate and that’s how those delicious legs were fried. 

Weekly Reader was the big thing for current news.  Just after a telephone was installed in school, the issue had telephones in barns. A discussion question centered on the need for such phones as cows surely didn’t talk. When the consensus was that it might be necessary to call the breeder, it was another case of the teacher running into the hall, not being able to constrain herself.

Thursdays was baking day and my stomach was growling by 10 AM. After school, two moms always sent over the world’s best kolaches and other scrumptious baked goods. How families could be so trim eating all that good food might be a puzzle today, but everything made chemically-free from scratch with fresh ingredients is now pretty much unknown.

Each of those 30 kids was physically attractive. One of the taller, always-smiling boys slicked his hair with the popular hair tonic of the day and at 7 years old was known as the Two-Dab Man. He never changed and when he died a few years ago, the church was packed beyond capacity. From what I know, each those kids went on to excel in their fields whether it be in roofing, construction, farming, working with the handicapped and elderly, in social work, teaching, writing a Civil War history and parenting. As their families before, they gave to God and community. Ironically, in my city district, I worked with some of them whose own children were in school, and  then worked with others who had mine. We had fun with identical twins who couldn’t recognize themselves in pictures. Each year one comes to town for an appointment, and that means a few precious hours spent over breakfast while way back in time.

As rural schools began consolidating, the one room schools came to an end. Our attendance center closed and the kids were transported to the village. I had saved enough money and planned to pursue further education. Mom got some of my kids so for a couple of years, they had two teachers with the same name, but one named Miss and the other Mrs. I always loved teaching and in all the years, wherever I was, I had the best kids ever. But, I’ll never forget the first two years at Lincoln Jt. District #4. It was more fun than the proverbial barrel of monkeys. Besides that, we had indoor flush toilets,  a janitor and 30 kids who missed their calling in comedy!