Sunday, A Poem

I realized today, looking at my bedraggled potted flowers on the deck that I have been in denial about autumn's arrival, dreading a little the time when they will all be consigned to to compost heap, and the summer colors will be replaced by fall colors, then all too quickly by the grays and blacks of winter.  I installed a reading lamp in the room where I have been spending lots of time lately, since it grows too dark for me to read earlier and earlier each day.

I haven't been doing any art at all - though I was honored to get some public recognition and a cash award this weekend in Madison for a painting I did last winter.  Instead I have been continuing to compile a vast family history, one that has brought me into communication with far flung distant cousins, and oddly enough, inspired me to add titles to my reading list.  I discovered a very distant connection between my maternal grandmother's ancestors and Daniel Boone's family, and find myself engrossed in a biography of the frontiersman.  Likewise, another branch of her people left Indiana and emigrated west to Oregon by covered wagon, and I find myself wanting to read titles by A.B. Guthrie, The Big Sky and The Way West.

What would my life be without the comfort and self-education that comes from being able to read? Billy Collins' poem First Reader brings back a memory from the two-room country schoolhouse I attended.  I only hope the last line isn't altogether true.  I want to always be able to both read, and look.

First Reader, 

by Billy Collins

I can see them standing politely on the wide pages
that I was still learning to turn
Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon brown hair,
playing with a ball or exploring the cosmos
of the backyard, unaware they are the first characters,
the boy and the girl who begin fiction.
Beyond the simple illustration of their neighborhood
the other protagonists were waiting in a huddle:
frightening Heathcliff, frightened Pip, Nick Adams
carrying a fishing rod, Emma Bovary riding into Rouen.
But I would read about the perfect boy and his sister
even before I would read about Adam and Eve, garden and gate,
and before I heard the name Gutenberg, the type
of their simple talk was moving into my focusing eyes.
It was always Saturday and he and she
were always pointing at something and shouting “Look!”
pointing at the dog, the bicycle, or at their father
as he pushed a hand mower over the lawn,
waving at aproned Mother framed in the kitchen doorway,
pointing toward the sky, pointing at each other.
They wanted us to look but we had looked already
and seen the shaded lawn, the wagon, the postman.
We had seen the dog, walked, watered and fed the animal,
and now it was time to discover the infinite, clicking
permutations of the alphabet’s small and capital letters.
Alphabetical ourselves in the rows of classroom desks,
we were forgetting how to look, learning how to read.

Found - Millard School Photos

Millard School in the 1930s

It has been a while since I've posted any family history, but yesterday I was digging around in the basement and I struck gold.  There was the tub I had stuffed with items we took from Mother's apartment after she passed away, not that full.  My thought was I could find a better home for what was in the tub and then use it to store the empty frames I've been tripping over up in the studio.  The frames are still all over upstairs, and I have been immersed in old pictures.

I grew up on a farm in Sugar Creek township in Walworth County, and like my father, paternal grandparents, and uncle, I attended Millard Elementary School.  Mother's notes say that my great aunt Dorothy Pierce taught at the school in 1910 and 1911.  Anyway, this photo was from grandpa Earl Pierce's album.  The school looked pretty much the same when I went there for grades 1-4 in the 1950s. 

These must have been the students in the Little Room, grades 1-4, about 1939 or 1940.  My dad, Ralph Pierce, is standing second from the left with his cap on.  The only other person I recognize is standing next to him, Barb Newman.  She was good friends with both my parents for years.  That's probably Hallie Moore to Dad's left, another lifelong friend. I suspect at least one of the girls is an Olivas, because they lived next to the school.  They had lots of children, a couple of whom were at Millard with me.  The third grade class of 1938-39 (taught by Elsie  Newman) included:  George Archamsault, Ralph Pierce, Hallie Moorie, Junior Rowe, Emily Sawn, Barbara Newman, Mary Helen Weaver, Marion Schumacher, and Jean McKinney.

Little Room (grades 1-4) photo in 1959.  Mrs. Dorothy Barker taught us all.  I'm in the back row, left corner, in the green sweater.  My best friend at school, Marianne Tripp stands next to me, and Juan Manchacas, the first boy who ever gave me a ring, wears a blue jacket.  The school population fluctuated seasonally as some of the Mexican children traveled with their families back and forth to Texas for agricultural work.

Dorothy Barker, me, and Ronald Stevens who taught the Big Room (grades 5-8) at a 2994 Millard Community Picnic.

I also found a pamphlet Mother saved from the 1994 picnic.  Someone (maybe Jim Pollard) had dug around in files at UW Whitewater documents room and found some old records about the Town of Sugar Creek School District #4.  Here is a sampling of old minutes and treasurer's reports from the school board.

September 24, 1866

 A.E. Green, Chmn.

T.P. Barker, clerk

Allen Loomer, Treas.

The meeting voted to have 4 months winter and 4 months summer school.

Voted to raise $160.00 for teacher wages.

Voted to have eight cords of stove wood -- let the job to the lowest bidder. ($23.10)

September 30, 1867

Voted to have four months winter school by a male teacher and four months summer school by a female teacher.

Voted to raise $170.00 for teacher wages.

Voted to raise $10.00 for the contingency fund.

Voted to raise $21.20 for wood.

November 21, 1868

To the Dist. Clerk of School Dist. NO. 4 of the Town of Sugar Creek,

Having attached all that part of Joint School Dist. #10 laying in the Town of Sugar Creek to School Dist. #4 of Said Town, We have ascertained and determined the proportion of the proceeds of the Sale of the School House and other property of such Joint School District due to School District #4 of Said Town to be $55.31.

Signed by:

Thomas David - Supervisor of the Town of Sugar Creek

Herman Taylor

Elisha (?)

Henry Stone

Sugar Creek - January 19, 1869

You are hearby notified that Marcus D. Barker has been this day suspended from the school on charge of Disorderly Conduct, imprudent language and for breaking into my desk and taking whips out and burning them. - C.M. Brighs - teacher

February 19, 1869

The following motion was offered and unanimously carried - Moved that a vote of censure be passed against Allen Loomer, clerk of Dist. #4 in Town of Sugar Creek for the manner in which he discharged or failed to discharge the duties of said office.

Resolved that it is the wish of this district that the use of the School House be let to the Debating Society for a debate.

Resolved that when this meeting adjourns to the 27th of February there will be a vote taken to raise a tax of ($600) six hundred dollars with which to commence to build a new school house.

September 27, 1869

Marcus Gray, Chmn.

Resolved that we have four months winter and four months summer school both terms taught by a female teacher.

Resolved that the District pay not over twenty dollars per month  and board for the ensuing year.

Voted that the District is willing that the Board Open House for religious services and for the Debating Society.

September 25, 1870

$15 dollar voted to purchase a new stove for the school house - the old stove sold at auction for $1.20.

December 27, 1870

Mr. J.B. Barker made a motion that the District build a new School House - carried by unanimous vote.

February 17, 1871

Motion was made by Hiram Taylor that the District pay Harmon Gray fifty dollars for an addition to the present site and sufficient to make the Whole and acre by the United States Survey - said land to be used for school purposes only.  

Carried.

March 4, 1871 -

Committee on proposals called on to report. J.B. Barker reported bid of $1500 for Brick house - $1225 for wooden building.  Voted for brick.  Note to include outhouse.

September 25, 1871

Motion made and carried that the old School House be sold to the highest bidder (sold to J.B. Kinney for $30.00).  The old Privy was then sold for $4.40 to H.L. Graves.

October 16, 1871

...that the School Board purchase lumber and build a fence from the School House to the Doctor's fence - said fence to be eight feet high and picketed.

...that we raise $16.00 for the purpose of getting seven inch Rusia (sic) stove pipe for the stove.

...we raise $6.00 for locks to the privies, hooks and wire for stove pipe and teacher's table.

March 2, 1872

Gave Mr. Davey a complimentary note for teaching our school this winter.

September 30, 1872

...we raise $153.50 to pay Dr. Gray hid demands against the District.

Voted that we have nine months school during the year, four months winter and five months summer school with a vacation. ($200 for teacher wages)

October 10, 1872

Discussion and votes relative to fencing school house lot - voted to raise $100 for purpose of building and painting the fence on two sides of the school lot.

Teacher for year - Lyman Earle.

August 31, 1874

Voted that we instruct the Board not to have any branch of mathematics higher than arithmetic taught in this school for the ensuing year - the smaller schollers (sic) to be taught by the teacher in person.  If any schollers have to be neglected, they must be taught by the larger ones.

This may be hard to see unless you click on it, but it is a loose sheet inserted in a ledger I found from g-g grandfather, John Alexander Pierce,  who homesteaded in the 1840s.  It's a handwritten treasury report for school district no. 4 in Sugar Creek.  The ledger itself is the account book for two flour mills and a creamery the family operated.  Looks like I'd better investigate donating papers to the state historical society.

Snow Day

This was what we saw out the dining room window before bed last night. Local weather forecasters called this storm a "beast." Our beast, little Bucky cat spent a good part of the evening in the cellar hiding from the snow thunder.

The scene this morning was a study in black and white. I was awakened a couple times during the night. Once when the cat climbed into bed for some warmth and security. Once by snow plows on the street, and again at 5:30 a.m. when the school district's new automated calling system announced that school is cancelled. Trouble is, I have been retired for three years. Plus, when the test call came two days ago I called the central office to remind them to remove me from their list. They assured me they would, but apparently the new system still has some kinks to work out.

We live on a hill, which makes winter weather tricky. We can step out the door and be lulled into thinking the weather is fair enough, forgetting the shelter the hill provides from wind. There's no pulling out of our driveway on these days and heading up the hill. We've had hours of entertainment watching other people try it though.

So, it's a day to stay in and read, or paint or work on cards. I didn't put up a big tree, but several small ones provide a little color on a day that has me humming "A Hazy Shade of Winter."

More of Grandma Tess's Tape

Grandma as a young woman

Grandma's friend Agnes, in a stylish bathing suit, about 1915

At this point in the tape Grandma talks about her family coming to Milwaukee while her stepfather is doing medical training in Boston. My mother, Carol, asks a few questions about cooking and the Depression.

Milwaukee was another disappointment to me. We couldn’t find a place to stay, and we went to a cheap hotel and lived there for a little while, and read want ads. Finally decided that I would have to go and board and room to start high school. I went into high school at twelve years old. In order to do this I had to work for my board and room., and be away from my father and mother, and the baby, which was the big hurt. But we got together occasionally.

But life as a student, trying to go to school and still work, do the work at home, and being as lonely as I was and having only two dresses to my name. Nobody wore slacks in those days. That was entirely out of the question. You wore skirts and a blouse or a dress. And Mother gave me one of her old dark blue dresses, and I cut it off at the waist and made a skirt for myself, and wore it out to the prom with a pink blouse. It was very very sad. When I got to the prom I found out I was the only one that couldn’t have an evening dress on. I didn’t know they wore evening dresses to proms. I didn’t even know what proms were. Twelve years old and from the Hicksville, I think they thought I was. But my date was wonderful, and didn’t – never reproached me or anything. In fact he took me over and introduced me to his folks. He was a complete gentleman. So, that was my first humiliating experience at school. But I was to have a lot of them. Except of course when I was (unintelligible), when it was one big humiliation. Life was rough. And it was rough for many long years after that, but I won’t go into all those details. 

We’ll let the girls ask me some questions now, about the Depression, probably, and my marriage.

Carol: Well, Mother, ah, I don’t remember Grandma Smith as being that great of a cook, but you were always a very good cook. So, how young did you start your cooking?

I was eleven when I started cooking on the ranch. Um, I helped, oh earlier than that I started helping and learning. And I liked it, so I sort of took over, making the cakes and pastries and things while we were still on the farm. And I baked cakes then. We had thrashers - great crews of men, they came to thrash the wheat, sometimes as many as twenty men, and that was a lot of cooking. So I had plenty of experience. But I always liked to cook and I liked to experiment and do things . When I worked for my board and room I did a lot of cooking. And I always liked to try new recipes, and I did them.

Carol: What about during the Depression?

During the Depression it was very hard to cook because we didn’t have any money, and the foods that were had to be had, even though they were cheap, they were expensive to us.

But we skipped a lot of time here. I had to get married in the meantime. We got married during the Depression,. while we were still out on DeWitt’s cherry ranch Mother and I and DuRell, waiting for my stepfather to graduate. And he was going to school back East then at Boston. And he went to Brigham Young and he went to Massachusetts General, and all the big hospitals back there where he interned. And he had started out in Marquette in Milwaukee. So, while all this was going on we were hanging on, trying to get by ‘til he got though. In the meantime I had grown up. I was eighteen, and then I was into my twenties. By this time we were out at Troy, and Mother was still doing her practical nursing, and there were babies born here and there. I was taking care of DuRell, and doing babysitting for the neighbors.

Carol: Was that the first paying job you had? Baby sitting?

Yes, it was, if you don’t count working for my board and room, which was much harder than baby sitting. The first I got money for was babysitting, and I got only about fifty cents a night. That was top wages then. And the night meant sometimes you had to stay all night. If they didn’t have transportation home or whoever you were staying for didn’t want you to leave. So, you never knew of you were going to stay all night or not, when you left, which wasn’t very happy for Mother. We didn’t have a phone at first at the farm, but after the boys started calling, the neighbors got really tired of having me go back and forth to answer the phone, so eventually, even though we didn’t have very much money, we did put a phone in.

But we were expected to live on a very very small amount of money. And we had to stretch it. I remember one time I put my family on a very strict diet, because I was supposed to mange the finances, so I could buy a new bathing suit, and the bathing suit was five dollars. So for a week we lived on cabbages and boiled potatoes, and we used to go out and pick dandelions and wild asparagus, and all that stuff.

Carol: Is this when you were in Troy?

Yes, when we were in Troy. We boiled it up. But it tasted pretty good. We were always hungry then, and everything we had, whether it was expensive or not, tasted good. And I finally got my bathing suit, but they wouldn’t let me get any more clothes that way. They said I was taking it out on them, and it wasn’t fair.

Sounds From the Past, part 2

Anna Bernice Adams, later Bernice Ann Smith

I've been continuing the slow process of transcribing the tape my mother helped my 92-year-old grandmother make back in December 1994. My husband says it's strange hearing their voices coming from the studio where I work; I guess it is. Like ghosts, almost. At the beginning she is still talking about living on the "Big B" ranch, which was in the southeastern part of Washington, not far from the Columbia River, and the Tri-Cities area today.

Bernice Tess interview pt 2

We had more horses than cows, because cows were purely for our own use. The horses were for sale and for breeding purposes. We had a lot of horses, and a lot of hired men and a great big lot of land. Four square quarters of wheat. I used to ride on my special mare all around the acres. It seemed like we’d go forever and still be on “our land” I called it, because to me it was our land. It eventually did become our land because my mother ended up marrying the manager of some of the land, the son of the man who owned it, and that was a turning point in my life.

It was my eleventh year. Everything seems to have happened in my eleventh year. My real father was shot and murdered when I was eleven years old, and six months after that my mother told me she was marrying again. The only son that was managing the ranch. Which was not particularly good news to my ears because I didn’t think he liked me, and I knew I was very much afraid of him, because I had been taught to be afraid of him. Because he didn’t like children. Well of course I would grow up. 

So, then I was sent away to school. To a Catholic school, and I was the only Protestant in the whole school. In the questions that my granddaughter Sherry asked, she wanted to know some of the people who had had a big influence on my life, and that I admired. And even though the girls were so hostile to me, there was one of the sisters. Because it was a Catholic school with sisters and priests, they went out of their way to be very very nice to me, and they really made up for it. – the coolness of the Catholic children. And this one sister, I think her name was sister Teresa, she encouraged me very much in my English and my composition. And I remember her telling me one time that she hoped some day to read an article or a novel or a piece of fiction, that I had written with my name on it because she was sure I would become a great author. Of course I would have disappointed her, because I never went on to college, and I never wrote anything that outstanding. I loved to read, but it was other people’s writings I enjoyed, not my own. That lasted, I was in the academy one full year, practically.

At the end of it they came and took me to Hillyard, no I think we went to Spokane first. I know that we lived very near the Jesu Church, and they told me there that next to that church was were there was a little house , not very big, and they said that was where - what was that singer? Bing Crosby was born, just a block from where we lived. And I always thought that was very exciting. Our house there was very small, not pretentious at all. But it was wonderful to me because I’d never had an inside toilet before, electric lights before. It was the first time in my life I’d ever had electricity or any of the nice things about living.

Carol: How old were you then, Mother?

Oh, I was eleven years old yet; that was my eleventh year. That’s my daughter, I’m glad they’re asking me questions, because that’s what I want .

My best friend died while I was still eleven. She was – I considered her my best friend. She lived next door, and she as a lovely sweet Catholic girl. But she didn’t hold my being a Protestant against me. She was, we were, very very close friends. And she played tennis with her brothers one morning and fell against the wire that was put up between the two poles. And I never understood how, but somehow she hit her head on the wire and died instantly. And that was a terrible shock to me. So I had lost two dear people that year, that I loved. 

Then I had the news given to me that I was to have a new baby brother or sister. Well, I was pleased about that, I guess. In the beginning it was such a shock to me I couldn’t hardly comprehend what was happening. But I was, later, it made me very happy, and I always enjoyed having a brother. It was wonderful, because I’d never had a sister or a brother. And I, I thought as much of him as I possibly could, of a real, full brother. And he never wanted me to call him a half brother. He was really angry with me if I said that he was my half brother. He always said, “There are no halves in our family, just wholes.” And that’s the way it was, all through our lives. 

I’m sorry for the interruption, one of my daughters just told me that I hadn’t told my brother’s name. His name was DuRell. And that was a family name from Dr. Smith’s side. His mother was a Durrell. She was French, French Dutch, or Dutch French; I don’t know which it would be. I always considered her more Dutch than French.

Carol: Is that the diamond that Sherry has?

Pardon me, Carol’s asking something.

Ellen: Is that her diamond that Sherry has?

Yes, Sherry has her diamond. And it was mine for a while, and before it was mine, I guess it was Dr. Smith’s mother’s. Yes. 

Carol: You never said who your stepfather was either.

Carol said I never said who my stepfather was. 

Carol: He wasn’t a doctor then.

He was not a doctor at that time. But that’s when we came back to Milwaukee he decided to become a doctor. And we had eleven long years ahead of us. And they were not easy years. We had DuRell to raise, and we had ourselves to take care of. Because his folks did not approve of him coming out there.

I wasn’t happy about leaving Hillyard, It seemed as though my life was just a series stops and starts m strange people, and losing friends, making friends and losing them. So I was very unhappy about the trip way “back East”, as we called it, although really it was only half way. But, we boarded the train. I couldn’t take any of my toys.

Speaking of favorite toys, Sherry once asked me which one was my favorite. And I did have a favorite doll? I had very few toys as a small child, because we moved so much and I never had a place to keep them. So, this doll was very special. The last time I ever saw my father, he brought the doll to me. Mother and I went to Seattle, no, we went to San Francisco, right after the fire, and the earthquake. And we went to a big hotel, ‘course most of the hotels were burned out then, and we could still see the black skeletons of them, and the ruins of bricks that were left, and the burned out houses. I can remember asking my mother what happened, and she said that they’d had a terrible fire after an earthquake. Anyways, afterwards we met my father at this hotel, and he had a big present for me. And it was a doll, a walking doll, and big, came up to my knees you know. And I treasured that doll more than anything I ever had, but I had to leave it behind with all the rest of my things when we started out for our new life in Milwaukee. 

Being on the train was an experience. We had a baby, of course, DuRell was very small, ten months old when we left. And we had to get our own meals. We had just what we could buy at stops. The train would stop and we could get off and buy things to cook on the stove, which was an old coal stove. The conductor put coal in, and some people heated up soup. And we heated up DuRell’s milk on it. And, the smell, of the coal smoke was not nice. We could, everything in the car smelled of oranges and coal smoke. Because so many of the people ate oranges to get the taste of coal out of their throats. And I always well remember that smell - coal smoke and oranges, mixed. To me, that’s train smell. And the conductors were very friendly, They’d come around very often, and set and talk, and play with the baby. But it was a very hard trip with a small child. And we had lost so much that we left behind that I was very sad.

I wasn’t happy about going to this new city. When we finally got there it was a long trip,, we slept in relays. We had just the chairs that we made into a bed at night, with a curtain that came round them. And we’d sleep for a little while, and then somebody else would get up and they would sleep, because we only had the two seats. Double seats. For the three of us. No, four of us, with the baby. So it was very cramped, very uncomfortable, And we were glad when we crossed the big muddy river, and finally landed in Milwaukee. The muddy river was the Mississippi. And I remember they got me up out of sleeping to go and look at it, and I was so anxious to see the Mississippi, all the things I heard about the mighty mighty Mississippi, and how beautiful it was. And I looked at it and was so disappointed. All it was, it looked like mud, like a river of mud. A big wide river of mud. And of course further on it looked much better, but that was near the big cities and it was very polluted. So I was disappointed in that.

Sounds From the Past

modified contour drawing of my great grandparents when first married

In 1994 when my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for a taped interview with my grandmother. I got the tape that year, listened to most of it, and put it in my tape caddy. Last week I got it out and listened for nearly an hour. There behind the hissing of the old cassette tape, were the voices of my mother, aunt, and grandmother. Grandma and Mom are gone now, and it makes me a little crazy that I cannot ask for more details on some of the stories. Now, after having put together memories with old photos, and having visited the places she lived as a young girl, I know what I would ask Grandma. In 1994 I didn't know, and was probably too busy with teaching to probe for more.

So, little by little I'm transcribing her taped answers to my questions, and when I finish I hope to have it transferred to a CD, and share it with my family. This is the first installment.

Transcript of Interview With Bernice Tess

December, 1994

This is Bernice Tess. We are gathered here with Ellen and Carol, my daughters, to celebrate Carol’s birthday, and while we are all here together we thought it would be a good time to answer some of my granddaughter Sherry’s questions. She has written down quite a few questions on paper that she would like to know about my past. And I think we should start more or less at the beginning, which is a long time ago, because I am ninety-two years old.

And I was born in the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington, the very very deepest part of the mountains in Leavenworth, Washington, where they cut the big pass for the railroad over the mountain. They had to put two engines on there because it was too steep for one engine. And my father, being an engineer, wanted to live there. So my first memories were of a little cottage, up on a hill, very high up, And all I could see when I was a toddler around the house was snow because the windows were all covered with snow, and we had to have lamps, oil lamps, to see by, even in the daytime. And gradually in the spring, we would see the snow go down, and we would watch it on the windows, because every day it’d be an inch or so when the sun melted, and it was very thrilling to watch the snow go down, inch by inch, until we finally could look out our windows. They were pretty dirty by then, but that didn’t bother me any at the time.

We lived there until I was about three years old and then there was trouble in the household. And my mother and father disagreed, or, agreed to disagree, I guess. Anyways, Mother got me up in the middle of the night one night and said we were going on a train journey. Which was very surprising to me because my father was still sleeping in bed. But we went to the neighbors and the neighbors took us down to a train, and we went to Hillyard, which was quite a few miles and on flatter land. It was a suburb of Spokane. And we went to a friend of Mother’s and stayed with her for a while. Eventually we bought a house there, or my father did; he came back to live with us for a while. But that didn’t last too long either. And this time when we left, we left for good. 

I wasn’t ready for school yet, so I must have been around four when we left the final time. And all I remember from those days were different people’s homes and faces where I stayed while Mother worked. She was a midwife, and she went to various homes and helped with babies being born, she told me. So I, being a very shy little girl, I wasn’t used to staying with all those people; I was very uncomfortable. Especially when I could hear them talking, whispering about my mother behind my back. I didn’t like it very well. So we were not too happy. Mother read ads in the paper, and finally decided the best place for us would be out on a ranch. There would be no people around to be talking about us, and we could live our own lives. So she answered an ad, for a man that wanted a housekeeper, out on a big ranch, in the east, northeastern part of Washington, right near the Columbia River. So she answered the ad, and he was not too happy. He didn’t know that she had a little girl, but he finally accepted me because there were very few people that wanted to go work on a ranch that was fifteen miles from the nearest town. Well, fifteen miles on land. If you crossed the Columbia River you could go to Hanford, and that was only six miles away, but it was hard to get across the big wide Columbia River. 

Eventually I had to cross the river to go to first grade, And then I was boarded out again. But, that year passed, and I was back to the ranch. Then we looked for a school teacher. We had a hard time getting one because nobody wanted to teach out there. It was very wild and woolly.

We had four big sections of land, and it was sand dunes and sage brush, and they grew dry wheat. It was an experimental thing with growing wheat, because it was bare, almost desert like country. Hardly ever rained. If it did rain we all ran out and tipped our heads and opened our mouths and let the rain run in. It was fun. We loved getting wet. We loved the rain.

But, school was not much of a success. We started out in a little one-room shack that had belonged to a homesteader that went broke, as they all did, most of them at least. And they had a woman teacher, but she didn’t stay with us long. When the left they got a man teacher and eventually built a one room school house, that was really a school house. We had an outdoor toilet, that had to do for both boys and girls, and we had a lean-to that did for the horses, because a lot of us rode horses to school. There were no cars of course, and no roads, really, just sand,. We went where there was room to go, there wasn’t a real road. And we thought we were very well off with the new school, though the teacher was rather - different. He taught us all that we didn’t really need to study, because the world was coming to an end, in just probably six months. So, we needn’t worry too much about our grades. He just taught religion to us. He said that was much more important than lessons. And of course we didn’t sleep very well at night, I had nightmares, Finally Mother asked me what was troubling me, and I told her. I said, “We are all going to die,”

“Oh no, “she said, “we’re not going to die.”

I said, “Yes we are, and it’s going to be real quick.”

And so, that was the end of the teacher. He left and we didn’t have any school that year at all, we just sort of took it easy and went without school. It pleased most people, but I was very hungry for companionship and the only companionship I had was at school. So I was pretty lonely. 

Then we got a hired man that was very very nice to me, so that helped a lot. He taught me how to dance, out in one of the hay lofts. It had a hard floor. It was over our jackass. And when we danced too hard he would bray, and make a terrible noise. You could hear him for miles away. But we laughed. That was just part of the fun. But I was never allowed to go near him. He was very vicious, wild. The farmers brought their mares there, but that was all. He had a very special yard of his own that was fenced in with high fences. That was just part of farm life. 

And we also had the only windmill in the country, and the only place that had a well big enough that they could dig down deep enough in the sand to get water. So all the farmers and the homesteaders would come to us for water. And they had water wagons in those days, made out of wood, and the slats twisted and turned like a barrel. Some of them leaked. Most of them leaked, and you could tell their trail, coming and going, by the water leaking out of the slats. But that’s all they had, apparently there was no way to seal the seams because they all leaked. But we never charged them for water. They got it for free. They just had to carry it. 

And we also had a huge big water tank, and that’s where I learned to swim, in the water tank. And then I also learned to swim in the Columbia River. But the current was so swift there that I had to have a big rope tied on me. Because the current would have carried me downstream, and that really wasn’t a very good place to learn to swim. So I really relied more on the water tank for the cattle and the horses.

School Days 1909

Bernice Adams' first school near Mesa, Washington

The new, larger school

I thought I’d share a little bit about my grandmother’s early school days. She left a couple pictures and a brief description in her autobiography. The time she describes is about 1909-1915.

“Mother and I arrived at the ranch in the summertime, and that fall there was no school for me to go to. This was finally solved by sending us to Hanford, a little town across the Columbia River. The river was about ten miles from the ranch. and had to be crossed by row boat. This was risky business as the river was very swift and it took two strong men to make the trip across and back.

Once more I was boarded out, this time to a poor Irish family, who needed the money. There was a girl; my age, and an older boy. I learned many things that year, most of them not taught at school.

By the following year a one room shack had been built a couple of miles from the ranch and a teacher was hired. He was fanatically religious and taught us that the world was coming to an end in a very short time. He wasn’t interested in teaching reading, writing, or arithmetic. After all, we would never live to need it! Much later I had to confess what was going on in the little schoolhouse. The teacher was fired and school came to an abrupt halt.

By the following year another larger school had been built. Still one room, but much more substantial than our former shack. We had a new teacher and we all took turns cleaning the school. Whoever got to school first had to build the fire in the big stove. We had from twelve to fifteen students in eight grades, and most of them didn’t show up on a regular basis. Whenever there was work to do at home that automatically came first. We were allowed to skip grades, and that explains why I entered high school at age twelve. I rode a horse to school and he was tied to a post, with a long rope, during the day. He had to be saddled and unsaddled, and fed and watered. Going to school really involved a lot of work in those days.”

First Day of School

It's back to school for students and teachers in Wisconsin today. Wisconsin passed a law to keep students from returning before Labor Day, mostly to keep young workers from abandoning their posts before the last gasp of summer vacations. When I was in elementary and high school we returned to the classroom after Labor Day because the Walworth County Fair wrapped up then, and many of us attended and exhibeted there. Today is only the second time since childhood that I am not returning to the classroom, and it feels pretty good. The morning is cool and the crickets are chirping. It's nice to be here reading the newspaper, planning my day, and feeling rested. Usually the first day of high school teaching meant feeling groggy from getting up and moving faster than usual, and from school anxiety dreams (can't find my classroom, can't find the students, forgot to prepare lessons). Of course there was usually nothing to worry about the first couple days except pointing confused freshmen in the right direction for their classes and the lunch room, and struggling to open their Master Locks on the soon-to-be-filled metal lockers. I wish the all anxious teachers and the confused freshmen the best.

The photo is me on the first day of school, either first or second grade. I attended the same elementary school as my father and grandfather, Millard School. I never attended kindergarten - they just threw me off the end of the educational pier into the deep water of first grade when I was six. I didn't have to walk to school; my parents gave me a ride in the green Mercury, and one memorable winter day when we were snowed in, on the tractor. It was a cream colored brick school with two classrooms and two lavatories (name of former students and the mark of Zorro scratched in the wooden doors) upstairs, a cloak room and boiler room in the basement. One classroom housed grades one through four, the other four through eight. The Big Room and the Little Room. A thick rope descending through a hole in the ceiling of the central staircase and hall led to a bell on the roof, the one that signaled the beginning of school and the end of recess. I remember standing on a chair to pull the rope. We brought our lunches in paper bags or lunch pails, and bought milk each week ahead of time, for daily delivery. You had your choice of white or chocolate in waxed paper cartons, and in the winter the cartons froze, creating a good slush. Physical education involved playing on the swings, rings and monkey bars, or chasing madly around the school building. Our music teacher came once a week, and could play a decent boogey woogie on the upright piano. Most of the time there were about five students in my grade, but I didn't notice the shortage of classmates since grades one through four all sat in the same room, listening to each other's lessons. If you didn't know it all by fourth grade you just weren't paying attention. It is a sorrow of my life that I never finished reading all the books in our little library before our little rural school consolidated with the Elkhorn school system, and I never made it to the Big Room before Millard School closed for good.