Memories from a one-room schoolhouse
By Marilyn Salzl Brinkmaan of Cold Spring
Sometimes my memory walks backwards in time to those days when my life revolved around simple school days. My childhood took a new turn.
One-room frame schoolhouses once dotted the rural countryside. They were white rectangular structures with small entry halls to hold coats, boots, lunch buckets, and wood for the stove. Their windows, providing light and ventilation, were placed the length of the structure, high above the level of sitting students. Their height allowed for maps and art to be displayed at students’ eye level; it also eliminated unnecessary distraction from outside.
I remember flipping the roll-down maps at the front of the room. I remember the squeak of the chalk on the blackboard, the dust flying when I smashed the erasers together. I remember the new friends I played with.
All eight grades were taught in one room. The interior dimensions of the room were determined by the range of the human voice. Often, George Washington’s picture graced the front wall near the American flag. Pupils who were often classified by ability rather than age, moved to the front of the room for recitations.
The distance between the rural schools was determined by the distance a six-year-old child could comfortably walk. Because of farm work, the school year was often shortened to accommodate farm schedules. Lunch was carried in syrup pails or small buckets. Drinking water was pumped from a nearby well.
Because of changing economic and social conditions, as well as a declining rural population, these tiny schoolhouses of yesteryear have all but disappeared from today’s landscape. Very few remain; most have deteriorated or been torn down. Some have been converted into homes, animal shelters, or storage sheds. Those still standing are crumbling shells with window panes knocked out, their frames appearing as empty eye sockets. They stand amid tall grasses and weeds, silent reminders of a past not so long gone. Only light and darkness enter them, but their stories can still be told by those of us who attended and were educated in them.
I spoke only German as a small child, and first grade was my introduction to speaking English as a first language. It came easily. I learned numbers by counting eggs in nests drawn on the blackboard by my teacher, Mr. Schmit. Tom, Dick, Jane, and Sally were the children in my first-grade reader.
We were called to a bench at the front of the room for classes. I can still hear Mr. Schmit saying, “Will the fifth grade please come to the bench?” When the upper grades were called, the lower grades listened. In this manner, students learned from each other. By the time they were ready to graduate, they had heard many lessons many times. If someone was having trouble with their studies, they were sent to the cloakroom with an upper-class student to help them. I was often called, and the next year, I was told to go to the next grade up. I did not like skipping a grade. I had made friends with the lower grade and had to make new friends in the next grade. And I didn’t like being the youngest student throughout my school years.
Noon hours and recesses were spent outside. We were told we needed fresh air, so we would sit still the rest of the day. In winter, we played deer or wolf in a nearby wooded area, or we sledded down a long, steep hill.
In summer, we played baseball or ante-ante-over, or tag. We were called back into the school when the teacher rang a bell from the steps. I remember our bell had a crack in it, like the Liberty Bell, we were told.
Lunch was eaten out of a syrup pail, a box, or a basket. If we were lucky, we had cheese sandwiches. Usually, we had jelly bread and water, sometimes a cookie or an apple.
I walked a mile to school. I was lucky. I had brothers and sisters who pulled me on a sled in winter. I rode with the wind blowing my hair from under the tassel cap that was hand-knit by my mother, my hand-me-down coat, wool mittens, and red snow boots for the walk to school. Sometimes we cut through a big woods following lumber trails, where we might see a deer grazing, or a fox or rabbit, or a squirrel following fluffy white snow down a tree trunk. Once in summer, I found a jack-in-the-pulpit growing in a thicket; another time, I found a lady slipper, which our teacher told us was our state flower. Other times, we pretended we were Indians like those we read about in our Minnesota Gopher History, and made birch bark canoes or tepees.
Coming home after walking a mile, the sun shining on the front door was an exhilarating feeling when I opened the door. And the dog, Rex, jumping from under the table to greet me. His rough, red tongue licked my cold, red face.
As the second Industrial Revolution era progressed, times changed. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, state law required that children attend school all year. Farm children could no longer start after fall harvests, so many farm boys dropped out of high school as soon as they could. They were caught in a bind between tradition and progress.
I feel I was born at the end of the pioneering era, when days were miles long, when nature showed us how and where to have fun, when family, home, and friends taught us values and goals, and our teachers enhanced and enlarged them.
Now, when I see an old one-room schoolhouse, I think that my days there were a wonderful experience, one which provided me with a rich learning experience and an appreciation for simple natural pleasures.
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