COUNTRY SCHOOL

CELEBRATE MAY DAY TODAY

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Celebrate May Day the “Old Fashioned Way.”

Find a nine-inch square of paper. When I was a child we used scraps

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MAY DAY BOUQUET

of wallpaper. Today I chose a piece of colored computer paper

1. Fold it into a triangle

2. With the fold toward you take one of the points and fold it to the middle of opposite edge.

3. Do the same with the other point.

4. Now fold the front flap of the top into the front bottom cup.

5. Poke or punch a hole into the top flap.

Now go outside and find flowers – even dandelions will be pretty. Tuck them into the pocket or cup you have made.

 

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HOW TO FOLD

As children we would hang them on a friend’s door, knock, and then run and hide. The person coming to the door was surprised and hunted down the giver to thank them with a kiss.

* * * * *

You can use this cup for many things. It will hold a drink for a short time.

As a teacher, I always made them for children who lost a tooth at school. It could be safely stored in a lunch pail or coat pocket for the tooth fairy.

Mostly I remember the fun we had making these baskets at school and then going home to search for flowers. I’d beg my mother to let me go down by the creek where I knew the May flowers were in blossom along with purple, white, and yellow violets. I never really went alone because Chum, our cowdog, would not let me. He assumed the duty of protecting me no matter wherever I wandered.

A BIRTHDAY CALL

~ lakeafton ~ Leave a comment

April 9 is my childhood friend’s birthday. The date is like a holiday in my mind.

How long we’ve been friends? I don’t know. We lived in farm country. We probably went to the Sanford Methodist Church Sunday school together before we started first grade in the Sanford country school. Neither building exists today. Now we live hundreds of miles from one another with but a few annual contacts.

Yesterday I called to wish her “Happy Birthday.” We laughed about the stuff we did as kids.

She remembered the float we’d built on my dad’s pickup truck. We were 4-H members with my mother as our leader. We couldn’t remember what we did although she thought it had to do with cream cheese and sandwiches. This morning my 4-H Achievement book, I’ve kept from those years, yielded pictures of us in white uniforms and caps.

Somehow it must have demonstrated the 1946 Labor Day Parade theme Food for Europe. Our float placed third.

 

 

The pictures were taken in front of my house. The float was done totally in green and white.

MY MOTHER’S MEMORIES

~ lakeafton ~ 1 Comment

I found this bit of writing when looking through my mother’s photograph album.

The things I miss and the memories I cherish … .

I am an old lady and this is the day before Easter.

We only had one child, a blond-headed baby girl named Phyllis, who we called Dottie as she was very small.

I miss the first bouquets of spring of a few yellow dandelion and perhaps a violet or two, clutched tight in a grubby little hand and given to me in love to put in a vase.

I also miss the May baskets the neighbor’s children hung on our door, who would come in for ice cream and cake afterwards. Now it seems the children don’t have time for the simple joys of life anymore.

I also miss the country schools and the programs put on in the old country church, and the happy little faces when Santa Claus came in.

These are just a few of the things that take me back many years. They were the good old days when we lived on the farm and you had neighbors who cared about you, and would always help each other out, if needed.

We had lots of hard work, but many pleasant memories, never forgotten.

We have lost many dear friends through out the years and made new ones also, but the memories linger on–never to be forgotten.

Now it’s my turn to be the old lady. I too remember

those days as a child on the farm and the country school.

WINTER LUNCH AND A STORM AT COUNTRY SCHOOL

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A picture of a little girl swinging in the wind on a storm door prompted this memory of the one-room Sanford Country School in the early 1940s.

When the weather turned cold, we started school with an additional ritual. Mrs. Parsons, our teacher, would ask if any of us had soup or something to be heated for lunch. A chorus of “I do” would respond. We’d open our lunch boxes to take out jars and hand them to Mrs. Parsons who put them on the top of the brown monster (a coal stove) in the back corner of the room. By lunch time the jars provided a hot lunch for us.

To make sure everyone had a hot lunch in the winter, Mrs. Parsons brought a sandwich toaster to school. At lunch time she sat in the back corner near the windows where there was one of the few place electric outlets in the room. All of us took our sandwiches to her. She cut them into quarters and laid them out on the shelf. She toasted a few quarters at a time and called us to collect them as each one was ready. They smelled so good whether they were peanut butter, tuna, bologna, along with steaming tomato or chicken soup. Now I know my thicker homemade bread was much better, but then I considered the kids who had square white store-bought bread for sandwiches and Campbell’s soup to be more fortunate.

On one particular winter day stands out in my memory. The snow started in the morning and built quickly into a blizzard. Snow piled up on the highway and was surely very slippery. I’m sure Mrs. Parsons must have been very concerned about getting all of us home. She had no way to call parents and close the school early. By the time school was finished, the unplowed roads were impassable.

Dad came to get me with our team of horses and a bobsled. A farmer’s bobsled was made with the body of a wagon on two sets of large sled runners. Dad waited with the horses just outside the fence that surrounded the school yard. The fierce wind scared me. It felt like it could pick me up and blow me away. I grabbed onto the fence to pull myself along. Finally, Dad had to leave the horses and to come and carry me to the wagon where he tucked me, Eleanor, Ruthie, Doris, and Betty and Bobby, all who lived on our road, under heavy black wool horse blankets to keep us warm while he faced the driving snow and wind to guide the team of horses back home.

I don’t remember, but I don’t think Mr. Parsons was able to get to Sanford with his school bus. I know there was one night the bus got stuck in the snow and all the students and Mr. Parsons stayed the night in someone’s home. I think Mrs. Parsons stayed with the family next door to the school overnight.