The color is a little better in the one below…
grandma
Aunt Naomi’s Story (Part 26)
My sixth grade year was spent at one-room Centennial School. This was a new mixture of students from other areas of the community and kind of exciting. Our teacher was Miss Luce. There must have been over 25 students attending. I remember some of the boys (Howard Carrendar) let the air out of Miss Luce’s car tire and got into a lot of trouble. The bad word of all bad words was painted on the back of the school in two foot high letters by some prankster during the school year. That caused a lot of commotion. I didn’t know what the word meant so I asked Mother and not only did she not tell me what it meant, but I was punished for saying the word. But I knew it was a word I was not supposed to use; of course I still didn’t know what it meant.
One common country prank was to push the school outhouses over. Our school’s was pushed over. I can’t remember much about where we went to the bathroom that day or if school was called off. Bill Norfleet’s mom, Marge, brought birthday party cupcakes and candy to Centennial when Bill had his birthday. This was something new introduced to us country children. Miss Luce used to let me help the younger students with their class work. I remember drawing paper dolls and clothes for a young girl. Soon all the little girls wanted me to draw paper dolls for them.
Photo Friday
Aunt Naomi’s Story (Part 24)
I have memories that differ from my older siblings’ memories of my early school years. I remember my first teacher being Rufus Kelsey. Evidently, I started school at age 4 with John as my teacher. I got sick a lot (shortly after that I had my tonsils removed) and had to drop out that year. Mother taught me to read and spell at home. Glenn Payne was my 3rd & 4th grade teacher. I can remember he gave me and Floyd a transportation mural to draw and color. He sneezed a lot. A few years later he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In later years he was cured, I believe. Glenn was teacher when a very traumatic thing happened. A wasp flew down Myrene Englebrecht’s wide-neck dress and proceeded to sting her. She ran screaming up and down the room. When Glenn realized what was happening, he asked a few of the older girls to take her into the cloak room and help her get her dress off and the wasp out. She was stung several times. To this day, when I see a wasp, my hand goes up instinctively and I hold the neck of my garment shut.
Glen played a mean joke on Roy Blockberger. Roywas a bit slow because he had a “draining ear.” Now days he would have tubes put in. Glenn asked who wanted to see stars. He put his coat overRoy’s face with the sleeve extended above and poured a bit of water down the sleeve. This was a stupid thing for a teacher to do, I thought. Everyone laughed at poorRoy.
Uncle Vernon’s Story (part 18)
I failed to mention the birth of our youngest brother Lloyd Justin Theodore Sommerer. Dr. Hill hadn’t delivered any babied for Mom at the present location so I went up to the road with a lantern to open the gates and get Dr. Hill down to the farm and again to open the gates to let him back out when he left.
While in basic training I was taken into the company commander’s office and read a telegram from Marjorie about Lloyd’s accident with his foot. He was a very sick boy for a while, but all the younger siblings remember that so I won’t expound on that further except to say that one time when I was kind of down, Mom tried to cheer me up by telling me how blessed we were. That she had 12 children and each of them had 10 fingers and 10 toes in other words all were normal people. But of course several years later Lloyd lost some of his toes.