Blogger displays the newest post on top, so if you've not read Part One of this saga, here is the link.
School opened at 8 A.M. with a break after about two hours for morning recess. Unless the weather was truly horrid this was the time to rush outdoors, shout, gallop about, take turns on the swing set; if we needed a drink of water or to visit the privy, this was the opportunity After 15 or so minutes teacher came out to the front steps and rang a hand bell to summon us inside. The hour and a half before noon was devoted to arithmetic classes. The upper grade students worked problems at the blackboard, there was written work to be completed and passed in. For the primary children there was learning to recognize numbers and eventually to learn simple addition and subtraction sometimes with visual aides to demonstrate the process.
There was a sense of relief when the hands of the big wall clock moved to 12 noon, books could be put away and lunch boxes brought out.
Lunches prepared early in the morning, held in a metal lunch box [or a lard pail or paper bag] were rather spartan. A sandwich curling in a wrapping of waxed paper, an apple or banana, a cookie. Milk, even with chocolate syrup added, tasted 'off' after several hours in a small thermos. I picked at my lunch not realizing there were children in the room whose lunches were so meager they would have enjoyed what I rejected.
With lunch over we had nearly 45 minutes left to be outdoors. The boys usually threw or kicked a ball. The older girls were good at organizing games for the younger children, London Bridge, jump rope, hop scotch. The whole school played Red Light, Green Light. In winter we tramped out a messy circle in the snow for Fox and Geese, or slid and slogged about, falling, wallowing in wet snow until we were red-cheeked and cold. Winter boots of the day were clumsy things pulled on over shoes; snow pants made of wool were thickly bulky and once saturated with melting snow took many hours to dry. Mittens became caked with snow, the fingers within chilled.
When the weather was too cold or wild to be outside we learned to square dance. The school owned a set of the Durlacher records ['Honah your Pahtnah'] desks were pushed back and we happily stomped our way through 'alle-mand right and left' and 'do-si-do.'
Afternoon classes began with a quiet time. With everyone back in their seats the teacher read a chapter from a storybook chosen to have appeal for both the older and younger children. Some put their heads down for a quick nap. [Heads on desks could also be commanded if the school room had gotten noisy or children weren't settling well.]
During the last 15 minutes of the school day the classroom was tidied. Books and papers were put away, chairs straightened. Children took turns to erase and wipe the chalkboards, the felt erasers were taken outside and 'clapped' to rid them of the day's accumulation of chalk dust. Two of the older boys had the privilege of bringing in and carefully folding the flag. The floor was swept, windows closed and fastened; in winter the coal fire was banked with a last hod of coal.
Hot Lunch Program
I was in 3rd or 4th grade when a free hot lunch program was provided for Young School. I expect this was at least partially government funded on a state or local level, though I recall a card party held in the cafeteria of the Village School as an effort to raise funds. The meals were prepared and brought in by a woman in the neighborhood whose pay for doing so was likely a mere stipend. Some of the food items were 'commodities,' other components would have required a trip to the nearest large grocery store. The meals were carb and calorie laden, hearty, plain and delicious, similar to what many of us would have been served at home. For the big families with meager means the hot lunch probably provided the best meal some children had for the day.
Laura O'Brian served as the first cook; in the following years Grace Christian took over the role of lunch lady. Laura worked a late shift at the local plywood veneer factory, had her own car. Grace's husband, Lambert, assisted her with packing in kettles and covered pans. Did he wait outside in the car or drive back the scant two miles to their home and then return?
While auburn-haired Laura was quietly efficient in serving food, Grace, a lanky, plain woman, had a loud and cheerful voice. The content of the lunches didn't vary greatly, but the savory smell of hot food being set out on the table at the front of the room made concentration difficult for the last few minutes of arithmetic class
There was a tray of sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly on white store bread; usually a large towel-shrouded kettle of mashed potato; thick gravy made from canned beef or pork [the commodities!] canned veg—corn, peas, green beans with an occasional substitution of canned applesauce. Dessert might be a square of frosted yellow or chocolate 'sheet cake.' Fridays were meatless—both cooks and many of the children were Catholics—with mac and cheese a standard offering. There must have been a few menu variations I don't remember—surely baked beans might have figured in a New England community, perhaps a pan of apple crisp made from the abundant local apples. Milk was served in half pint cartons to wash all this down.
I think we were required to bring at least our own silverware, possibly also an unbreakable plate for each person. There was never any question of each child paying for their lunch.
There was no running water at the school; I hope we lined up before lunch to whisk our grubby paws through a basin of cold water and dry off with a brown paper towel.
Programs and Parties
A Christmas program and Memorial Day 'exercises' were held each year. Both were anticipated events to which parents and neighbors were invited.
Preparation for the Christmas program began as soon as classes resumed after the four day Thanksgiving recess. Cut-outs of black Pilgrim hats and hectically crayoned turkeys came down from the bulletin board to be replaced through December with Santas, stars, Christmas trees and bells cut from red or green construction paper. The off-cuts of construction paper were sliced into ½ inch strips to be looped and pasted [that delicious paste!] into festive paper chains.
Teachers of the day subscribed to a magazine, 'The Grade Teacher,' and from their hoarded copies came the poems, skits and acrostics to be laboriously committed to memory. Rehearsals went on for days with children nearly frantic with anticipation during the last week before 'the program.' Someone's father would bring in a small hemlock or pine cut from a back pasture and an after lunch session was dedicated to trimming the tree with our construction paper chains, wobbly stars and a string or two of Christmas lights supplied by teacher.
One memorable year there was to be a skit in which the younger children were meant to be pajama clad [these to be pulled on over clothing] a sort of waiting for Santa presentation. One grubby little girl from the poorest family innocently confessed that she had no pajamas or nightgown as she went to bed in her slip. On the day before the program there was the quiet presentation of a new flannel nightgown for Patricia; on the night itself most of us turned out in suspiciously new and nappy flannels.
On the evening of the Christmas program parents, grandparents, younger siblings and neighbors crowded the over-heated schoolroom; those grownups who could fit appropriated our desks as seating, a few chairs were put into use, many of the dads leaned against the back wall. We sang our songs, popped out from behind the improvised bedsheet stage curtain to speak our pieces, teacher always just out of sight to prompt anyone suffering stage fright.
I was usually taught a vocal solo meant as a surprise for my mother. Since I could never keep a song to myself and would unwittingly sing it at home Mother had to feign surprise. After my debut performance while a first grader various grownups patted my head telling me I had sung beautifully. I recall that when the last exiting mom praised me saying, 'You sang good,' I wearily replied, 'Yes, I know I did!' [Insufferable little creature!] She immediately reported this to my Mother and on the way home I was given a lesson in the more appropriate response.
As the final song of the evening was belted out there was a great stamping and 'ho-ho-ing' from the entry—someone's dad or uncle had slipped out, squeezed into a red suit, pulled on a cotton batting beard and was prepared to hand out gifts from the tree. There would be tokens from the teacher [who would receive frilly handkerchiefs and jars of hand lotion or, from some child's talented mom perhaps a crocheted doily.] Children could expect colorful boxes of hard candy, popcorn, a nice small gift from the teacher. There was also the custom of 'drawing names' so that each child could give and receive a gift from another student. During the years of the large French family there was an unspoken feeling of dread, for if one of those children drew your name only the cheapest and most disappointing trinket could be expected.
The Memorial Day presentation was a more solemn occasion though no less preparation was made. Some fathers of students had fought in WWII, there had been family members lost to war. Memorial Day exercises were an afternoon program with most of the fathers away at a job or deeply involved in the push of spring work on the farms. Some of the women who attended brushed away tears as we recited our poems, declaimed the Gettysburg Address, waved our little flags and stamped our way through flag drills. We sang, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord', voices rising jubilantly on the chorus, 'Glory, Glory, Hallelujah' while petals fell from the white lilacs we had cut that morning from the bushes that grew in the schoolyard.
For the program in my final year at Young School I memorized 'The Blue and The Grey' and for quite a few years after I could recite the entire poem; now only a few lines remain if memory is jogged.
“By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:”
We were fervent in our singing and marching and recitations, with no concept of the history of war behind us or yet any hint of what was to come.
Though never as elaborately prepared as the Christmas or Memorial Day programs we did observe Halloween and Valentine's Day with school parties. On the day, afternoon classes were suspended. We wore masks [Halloween] bobbed for apples [a messy and unsanitary game which I despised] ate great gobs of candy corn, chocolate, popcorn and apple cider. No one spoke in those days of excess sugar consumption and the behavioral or health issues associated; we went home for the weekend hyper and half sick.
Valentine's Day was a quieter afternoon, a crepe paper decorated box into which we had placed our cards, many homemade, the passing out of heart-shaped pastel candies inscribed with flowery sentiments.
Changes
I don't recall what year the Young School enrollment was reduced to six grades. During Mrs. Disorda's final year with us [my 4th grade] the 'big kids' had moved on, the unruly boys were gone. Several families contributed first graders nearly every year, there was little change in the surnames of the group.
When school opened for my 5th grade year, there was an unfamiliar teacher greeting us. Mrs. Lois Sullivan traveled from her home in Salisbury. This may have been a return to teaching after a hiatus of some years. . She didn't have prior acquaintance with our families, was just learning our names and personalities, establishing a routine when after several weeks she left us. I later learned that she had a household of husband and young children, was active in the family business and in town affairs. It would seem that she thought better of adding full time teaching to her life at that time.
We were surprised to return to school on the last Monday in September and find another new teacher already seated at the desk.
Mrs. Arlene Gray had served in the military as had her husband. They had been struggling to make a going concern of a lake property with a seasonal restaurant catering to the yachts that trawled along Lake Champlain.
Mrs. Gray conducted classes in a more relaxed and unstructured way than her predecessors. She was quietly firm and there were no discipline problems. Mrs Gray wasn't musical, but she read aloud well and the time formerly spent in singing was now a story time.
She dressed simply in twill skirts and plain blouses. For the Christmas Program or other formal meetings she appeared in a well-tailored dark suit that may have been a remnant of her military years.
That first autumn of Mrs. Gray's tenure coincided with a seeming explosion of the resident squirrels who scampered through the bare branches of the shag-bark hickories outside the schoolroom windows. Mrs. Gray encouraged us to notice the antics of the squirrels and to acquaint ourselves with the names and habits of the birds we could see. Her appreciation of the outdoors resulted in a December trek to a nearby neighbor's snowy woodlot where with his permission we selected the schoolhouse Christmas tree, carefully cut down by the older boys.
In May she led us along Knox Hill Road below the schoolhouse where a variety of wildflowers grow.
Fifth grade brought the introduction of fractions and my faulty grasp of math concepts began to emerge. After days of frustration—probably both for me and the teacher—Mrs. Gray had each of us cut a large circle from 'oak-tag' as a base. More circles were created from colored construction paper and we were shown how to use ruler and compass to mark each color into pie-shaped wedges representing halves, quarters, eights, thirds, sixes. Layering these 'slices' in different configurations I could begin to see the relationships. It probably resulted in the most comprehensive vision of math that I have retained.
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