Country School Tales: Part 2

One room schools were the backbone of rural communities for over a hundred years. My people attended them and taught in them.

Some carried the names of families who started schools in the late 1880s, like Stainbrook, Kline, and Stirling. Others took the names of townships: Foster, Lake City, Fairview, and Pleasant View.

Kulm was created by immigrants, named after their home in Europe. The presidents were also popular - Lincoln and Washington. And one school was named after a community, Milltown.

Inside the schools hung blackboards, pictures of Washington and Lincoln, pull-down maps of the world and an U.S. flag. Off to the side of the main teaching area was a cloak room. Until much later, there was no running water.

“There was no well at the Lincoln School, so each family took turns bringing water in a galvanized pail. Every day the water tasted differently!” – Maynard Schulz

“The Pleasant View school had a cistern. Each day we would fill the water bucket, there was only one dipper and all of us used it!” – Martin Luebke

If you needed to use the toilet, most often you had to take a trek to the wooden outhouse! Conveniently, there was one for the boys and one for the girls.

According to Kae (Brink) Berry, the Foster School was lucky, its outhouses were made of brick by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.

Some schools may have been even luckier, they had indoor chemical toilets! The students didn’t have to deal with cold winter walks, but they had to deal with something else!

“Sometimes the smell of those toilets got pretty bad! We used sulfur to try to cover it. Our teacher, Margaret Adkins, was a smoker. She would sneak into the girl’s room at recess to light one up. We could always tell because she lit the sulfur too! At least it got rid of the rancid toilet smell!” – Richard Luebke

The school day began with the Pledge of Allegiance. This activity was encouraged by the Young Citizen’s League (YCL). Starting in 1899, it became an integral part of rural schools. The organization proclaimed the necessity for systematic instruction in citizenship in the schools, and to instill American ideals.

Part of that citizenship included the students being responsible for maintaining the school's cleanliness. Each week there would be chores. Cleaning blackboards, erasers and even the floor! Everyone got involved.

YCL dues, if collected, went back into the school.

“We used our money to buy sheet music. Part of the process was very democratically we voted on what to buy.” – Veronica (Bertsch) Swanson

If you were one of the fortunate ones, you may be chosen as a delegate to the YCL convention at the state capital in Pierre, South Dakota. There you could meet the Governor and attend legislative meetings. Sometimes, for rural students, this was their first overnight excursion far from home.

“We stayed in the big old classic, St. Charles Hotel. We sat in on all kinds of meetings. Our county superintendent, Clara Metzger was our chaperone. It was two full days away from home and I had never gone away alone!” – Becky (Heitzman) Bartel

“I got to sit in a legislator’s desk. Impressive for an 8^th grader!” – Gail Sperlich

The learning day was spent with lessons given to however many grades were in the school. Every student heard them all! Called to the bench next to the teacher’s desk, 2^nd graders would read, to be followed perhaps by 5^th graders constructing sentences, then 8^th graders dealing with arithmetic.

Reading was always encouraged. Some, like the Kline School, were visited by Clara Metzger, the Hutchinson County Superintendent who brought books from a revolving county library.

“My favorite books were the Little House on the Prairie Series.” – Richard Tiede

Rural Schools were not without music and art lessons. Many had pianos, some in better condition than others!

“We had a piano, but the ivory was missing from one key!’ – Maynard Schulz

Oft times, one of the students could be the accompanist, like Mildred Schulz at the Lincoln School and Bonnie Wuertzer for the Lake City School. Sometimes, the teacher could play the piano. Hazel Mattas, my great aunt who taught at the Kline and Milltown schools, was big into music.

“Mrs. Mattas brought hymn books to school. Her father was a preacher you know. We learned how to harmonize!” – Richard Winter

“When I had Mrs. Mattas as a teacher in Milltown, we sang ‘Bless Be the Tide that Binds’ at the end of every school day.” – Duane Muchmore

From early on, Spelling Bees were a must in rural schools. How better to teach students how to spell (coorectly) (corectly) correctly!

The masters of the Spelling Bees seemed to be the Muchmore family from the Milltown School. Lynn, Duane and Iris all won first place championships at the State Fair.

“In our family, nightly entertainment consisted of my mother, with the Eaton True Blue Speller, urging us on to spell each word correctly!” – Duane Muchmore

For some, spelling was not easy. Kae (Brink) Berry recalls one of her classmates during a Spelling Bee, “The word was opossum – he asked does a possum take one p or two?”

The students thought this was hilarious.

Recesses in rural schools were always an adventure! Outside of the usual games like “Annie, Annie Over,” “Kick the Can,” “Pump, Pump, Pull Away,” “Fox and Goose,” many were invented by the students. Given rural locations, they had opportunities that town schools did not. Cornstalks were used to build forts, nearby ponds could be skated, left behind culverts turned into devices for rolling down hills.

One of the common activities, (warning for those with squeamish stomachs), was gopher hunting. Gophers were a plague for the farming communities, so destroying them seemed like a good thing at the time. Each school had its own method.

“We’d pour water down the gopher holes, when they came up at the other end, we’d try and hit them with baseball bats.” – Stan Wuertzer

“More often than not, we didn’t succeed!” – Bonnie (Wuertzer) Martinese

At the Lincoln School, Richard Luebke came up with a unique idea, pouring gasoline down the gopher hole, and then setting it on fire. This was not a good one. It took all the stomping on grass that the students could muster to put it out!

Before noon recess, everyone sat at their desks and had lunch. Opening their tin boxes, they pulled out sandwiches, perhaps a banana, maybe a thermos of soup.

Some students got creative. Richard Luebke would put a hot dog in a jar of water on the furnace - hot lunch!

In hard times however, a hot dog was a luxury. During the depression, my cousins, Homer and Hiram Adkins, Stirling School students brought lard sandwiches for lunch.

“We always had homemade stuff. One of my classmates had Twinkies, I traded with him, whenever I could.” – Martin Luebke

In earlier years, according to Darlene (Baumiller) Mogck, the big event at rural schools were Box Socials. You would decorate a basket, fill it with goodies and it would be sold to the highest bidder. If you were lucky someone you admired would buy it.

But mostly, the highlight of the school year was the programs! Most often they were held at Halloween.

Families built stages, created gorgeous cakes for the fundraising cake walks and provided treats. One of the most popular was the caramel apples served at the Lake City School, by Marcella Heitzman and Netty Wuertzer. (Go to recipe page)

“My father, and others made a stage with sawhorses and planks, rigged up some lights and hung a big black curtain across.” – Veronica (Bertsch) Swanson

“In one of the programs, I had to peel an apple, so the peel ended up in one piece. I peeled a lot of apples to perfect my technique! The night of the program it didn’t work!” – Teri (Marquardt) Kemmer

“I had to pretend to faint once. I didn’t know there were so many ways to faint!” – Lavonne (Luebke) Black

Everyone got a part in the program and at its end the schools were filled with applause.

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Edited by Jessica Kay Brown

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