I attended Center School-, September
1947 through May(?) 1948 First grade only
Mrs. Parnell was our teacher. She had 8 grades of students,
with a section of blackboard around 2 or 3 walls for each
grade's assignment.
I remember playing out on the playground and learning
about skunk cabbage in the area near Leadmine Brook. I
think we played the usual things except for games using
chalk, because the playground wasn't paved as I remember
it.
I enjoyed being allowed to go to the bookcase corner to
get a book to look at if we got our schoolwork done. My
favorite was a picture book about the Dionne Quintuplets.
We also used to sit at our desks with paper tiles with
numbers and letters on them to put them in order on our
desktops (in first grade; maybe the second graders too).
Whoever sat behind me was irritated with me because my
braids got onto his desk and swept his hard work out of
order. loops)
All I can remember of fellow first-graders were: Patty
Cable, Marvin Woodilla, and Rosemary DelGobbo. Michael
Febbroriello, Jane Woodilla(?) and Linda Harding were
all I remember of second graders.
We had 2 outhouses south of the school building; one for
boys and one for girls. I've never wanted to kill time
in an outhouse--do what you had to do and get out of there.
If we had to "go", there was a chalk square
on the bottom left side of the front chalkboard where
we put our initials, then erased them when we came back
in. Sometime during the school year, some mysterious "hooligans"
vandalized the girls' side, so we all had to use the boys'
after that.
I remember having to mostly go home for lunch and back
because with 3 little kids at home, (my sister Libby was
born in March of'48) my mother didn't want to pack me
a lunch in the morning. That was quite a hill to climb
to our house up across from the library, but going back
was lots easier! I used to like to walk through the cemetery
and read the names and dates on the headstones. I can't
remember how much time we were allowed for lunch, maybe
one hour. Had to be back before the bell! During one of
many days slogging up the hill during the winter, I remember
being hungry, and thinking that the slush looked like
brown sugar. One day, I couldn't stand it anymore, and
tasted it! I still remember how awful that tasted-, good
thing nobody saw me.
It has always been weird to tell my boys (and my husband--city
kid..) about what it was like to walk to and attend a
one-room school. They've always kind of rolled their eyes
about it, like I was from another planet. It is wonderful
now to drive about one hour from where I live now into
rural Indiana to Amish country where there are still one-room
schools being used. The teacher (usually a young woman)
hitches her horse and buggy in the schoolyard. At least
Mrs. Parnell drove a car!
