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Memories of my first four years of formal education in District #4

People have been sharing stories and memories with me over the years. I have decided to share those memories with our readers. So, with full permission from the authors I will add these memories to this series of columns. The following memory is from Geraldine Swang Velde.

“I remember the very first day of school in District #4 Yellow Medicine County. My father brought me to school that day and introduced me to the teacher, Helen Brevig. It was a one-room school with a hallway entry. We spent some time looking at the large globe which hung from the ceiling and talking about the world that morning.

There were two boys in my class that first year. During the second year, I was promoted to the third grade, I guess the teacher felt I needed to be more challenged by putting me in a class with another girl and two boys. I continued attending District #4 through 5th grade.

When the high school bus came within a half mile of our home, my father decided to send my younger brother and me on the bus to “town school” with the high school students. It was probably closer for us to catch the bus than driving us 2-1/2 miles to attend District # 4.

An event that sticks out in my mind happened on the way home from rural school as my brother (two years younger) and I were walking home from school one nice spring day. After a recent rain the ditches were full of water. We noticed fish were swimming in the water. Off came our shoes, his pant legs rolled up and into the water he went. There happened to be a fence along the field and as he entered the water, the fish swam into the fence. He was just a little boy, but he caught several fish with his bare hands. We put them in our dinner buckets and dipped the buckets into the water-filled ditches several times on the way home to keep the fish alive. When we got home we put the fish in the stock tank and they lived several days. Some folks think this is a “fish story,” but I know this is true. I was there!

I started first grade in 1933. Dad drove us to school during the winter in a horse-drawn mail wagon (which he had purchased for this reason of taking us to the school 2-1/2 miles). Sometimes the team of horses drove over the hard snow banks pulling the wagon. The driver sat on the back seat, facing front and my brother and I sat on the front seat facing to the back with the driver’s lines (to steer the horses) between my brother and me. The lines continued out a small hole in the window frame. It was cold, but we had a blanket made of horse hide over our laps and feet. The driver had his feet on a flat stone (which was heated previous to our trip in the kitchen wood stove oven). He had to drive home again after taking us to school.  This process was repeated again in the afternoon when school was over.

School was very interesting to me. I still have the poem book presented to me by our county superintendent Clara Thorpe for perfect attendance. We had classes in reading, arithmetic, spelling, language, history and geography in that one-room rural school. We had special Christmas programs, P.T.A. and a picnic the last day of school. I still feel guilty about dumping a piece of cherry pie behind the coal shed during the picnic. It looked so red and pretty, but tasted terrible!

We played a lot of games during recess, especially ball games. In the winter, we skated on the frozen pond near the school house. I didn’t have skates, but I slid on the ice with my over-shoes. The first kiss I ever had from a boy was placed on my cheek by an 8th-grade student as he skated by on that pond. How romantic!

We carried our lunch to school in a dinner or lunch bucket. I come from a Norwegian family, enjoying Norwegian food. On the days when my mother had limburger cheese on our sandwiches no one wanted to sit by my brother or me during lunch because of the odor, but we liked limburger cheese. In the spring and early fall we were permitted to sit outside to eat our lunch. I remember the fellow who entertained us by letting the flies gather on his sandwich before he quickly grabbed a bite — flies and all. He also was the boy who came to school with welts from a razor strap across his back and arms, placed there by his father the previous night because he sneaked out of bed to listen to the radio. He learned to obey and is a nice man today.

I recall another incident which I shall never forget. It was the daily duty of two of the pupils to walk across the road to the neighbors’ well, pump water into a pail and bring it back for our drinking water. One day two of the older girls who were sent to get the water came back with no water and their tongues hanging out. It seem they had trouble getting the hand pump to pull up any water…finally, a little came into a cup and when the girls let the dirt settle to the bottom of the cup, they quenched their thirst before again working to get more water to come out of the well. Suddenly, a dead mouse came out of the pump and the girls came back with an empty pail. The dirt which had settled in the water they had drunk was from mouse hair. We did not have water to drink that day.

These are some of stories which happened during the early years while attending District #4. I really enjoyed the teachers and they were such a good influence on my life that I decided during those formative years that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up and so I attended teacher training classes and fulfilled my dream!!”

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