What good looking girls…
aunt lolly
Photo Friday ( 4 for the price of 1)
Photo Friday
Aunt Naomi’s Story (part 23)
I have a few memories [of Oak Grove School] that are unpleasant also. I got terrible sick to my stomach when I was in first grade and I was too shy to tell the teacher. So I upchucked right on my desk. Cleo and Lolly had to clean it up. Bless the poor things! I remember a teacher, Rufus Kelsey trying to get me to read. I was extremely shy. He asked me if a “cat had got my tongue.” I never knew what he meant and had to ponder all day what it meant. I was a very shy child. It was fun to see who could make the most “marks” on the blackboard and then count them. (A Friday afternoon game).
On very cold days, walking to school, Mother would give us hot boiled eggs to hold in our gloved hands. This would help keep our hands warm for a while, and we could then eat the eggs for lunch. We had to walk a mile or more through meadows with cows, hills, two creeks, gates, wire fences (one had a hole cut in it just large enough for us to crawl through), and a barbed wire fence which had a burlap bag wound/tied around to keep us from tearing our clothing. It was no easy task to walk to school. It was very difficult to cross the field with the cows especially if we did not know if the bull was grazing with them. One occasion, Lolly stumbled and sprained her ankle in the Goetz meadow. We were a long distance from home. Cleo and I ended up putting her astride an old fence rail and carried her home that way.
Aunt Naomi’s Story (part 22)
[Editor’s Note: Aunt Naomi divided her memories up by periods of her life, and not into these little parts. I’ve taken the liberty of cutting chapter 3, Elementary School, into 6 parts to make it easier for us to talk about them one at a time. Thanks Aunt Naomi for writing all of this down.]
The following students made up the enrollment of Oak Grove School, grades 1 through 8 over the years I attended: Roy Blockberger; Shirley, Ralph, and Glen Robinett; Delores Vieseman; Barbara and Jimmy Goetz; Freddy and Darlene Hammond; Rochelle and Carol Shellman; Geneva and Myrene Englebrecht; Marilyn Probst; Floyd and Mary Jane Siebeneck; Mary, Esther, Ina Golden; Leland Sappenfield; Bobby Crede; Cleo, Lolly, Naomi and Lloyd Sommerer.
The school was set in woods with an area large enough for the school, a play yard on all sides, a woodshed, two outhouses and a well with a pump. The entrance side faced what is now called Deer Run Road. The entrance had large cloak rooms on each side. That is where we put our coats, boots, hats, lunchboxes, balls and bats. Cleaning supplies like push brooms, cleaning compound and other items were kept there also. Books and other school supplies were also stored there. Rows of seats of various sizes ran up and down. They were secured to planks on the floor, so could not be easily moved. The wood heating stove was in the middle of the room. The water crock set in a back corner. There was a cabinet with glass doors for a library. We didn’t have many books to read but the Cole County Bookmobile came once a month and we were allowed to choose books to read. They were returned the next month and new books chosen. The teacher’s desk was on the “stage.” This was an 8” rise in the front of the school and the students recited at the teacher’s desk on the stage.
Blackboards (black slate) covered the entire front wall (except for the window) and part of the side walls on the stage. When the students presented a play, curtains would be pulled open and shut on a wire extending from one wall to the other across the front of the stage. Portraits of Washington and Lincoln hung on the walls. I have wonderful memories of Oak Grove and appreciate being able to attend a “one-room country school.”
Aunt Naomi’s Story (part 19)
When I was small and Cleo was still at home, Cleo, Lolly and I slept in the same bed in the west bedroom. (The pink room.) Being the youngest, I always had to sleep in the middle. That was okay in the winter, because having a sister on each side of me, I kept warm. However, in the summer it was quite uncomfortable. Many times in the summer we took our mattress outside and slept under the stars. (But invariably we ended up inside before morning, when the room had cooled down – also we were afraid a snake might crawl on us). Most of the time there was a nice breeze from the south window of the bedroom, and sometimes the bed was placed there. I used to love to listen to the wind blow around the corner of the house at night. It made a lovely sound. I also used to love to listen to the sound of the teakettle’s hissing sound when it sit on the wood burning kitchen stove. Sometimes our hands would get very chapped because we worked in the cold outside milking cows. You had to wash the utter before you milked to get the dirt from them because they would have to lie down on the straw and manure in the winter. We didn’t have hand cream, so to sooth and heal our hands, we rubbed lard or tallow into them. Lard is the fat from pork and tallow is from beef.
One night I can remember snow falling off the roof of the kitchen and we were very scared. We thought someone was outside and going to “get” us. Daddy had given mother an oak china cabinet for a wedding gift and it sat in the kitchen on the west wall for many years. The rifle was always kept on top where children could not get to it. It was not kept loaded, but the box of bullets was kept next to it. You had to stand on a chair to get to it. I now have this china cabinet.