School Days

When it was time to start to school, I had not gotten over
being bashful. One could say I was a bashful little boy clear up to
my high school days. When we had company, I would hide my
face in Mother’s dress tail until I was past six years of age. I
wouldn’t tell the teacher my name the first day of school. She
couldn’t pry it out of me. Finally, my brother Max had to tell her
my name. We had to ride our horse to school for several years.
Old Nell was our faithful horse who took us to and from school.
What an experience that was! North Star School was five miles
north of our house and for at least four of those five miles, we rode
into the cold north winter wind. Old Nell would buck the
snowdrifts, which we may have bucked more than was necessary
to get us to school sometimes. We didn’t have any Long John
underwear or gloves that I remember. Max always drove the
horse and I rode just behind the army saddle, which only had brass
rings to hold onto. I had the best seat, because Max broke the cold
north wind with his body. One cold windy morning, we were
about half way to school when my hand had become so cold that I
couldn’t stand it any more. I told Max not to kick the horse
because I was putting my hands in my pockets. But he did it
anyway, and when he kicked Old Nell, I went tumbling off the
back onto the ground. It hurt and my streaming tears were
freezing on my face. I was so mad at Max, but he was bigger than
I, so beating him up was out of the question. About that time, Mr.
Dunn, a neighbor, came along in his car. He put me in his car and
hauled me to school. Max rode in on the horse. There was a horse
barn at the school where we kept our horses. There were several
horses as it was how kids got to school. We had to take grain in a
sack for our Nell, so we could feed her at noon. There was hay at
the barn, but I don’t know who furnished it.

One day a blizzard hit the area shortly after noon. The
teacher sent everyone home, but by the time we got to the corner
to turn for our place, we couldn’t see anything, and apparently Old
Nell couldn’t see either. Nell would have turned at the driveway if
she could have seen it, as she knew the way. We ended up a halfmile south at Mr. Dunn’s place. They took us in and put Nell out
of the storm. Mom, Dad, and Uncle Charles Smith, known as
Duke, had gone to town in the Chevy, not knowing that a storm
was approaching for we had no weather forecast, radio, or
telephone to warn us. Uncle Duke walked ahead of the car and led
Mom and Dad across the pasture to our house, but upon arrival at
home, they were quite concerned finding no kids. So Uncle Duke
walked another mile in the storm to the Dunn place where he
found us kids all warm and cozy. Then he had to walk the mile
back home to tell our parents we were safe. It all turned out well,
but it could have been a disaster.

Max and I always ran a trap line in the wintertime, so we
would run some of our lines on the way to school. If we caught a
skunk, we went on to school with a scant smell of skunk on our
clothes, but when we got inside of the school building next to

John With North Star Class

the John with North Star class hot wood and coal heating stove, the unpleasant aroma became very strong. So the teacher would send us home. We didn’t care much because then we could run the rest of our trap lines. Mom would have to wash our overalls so we could go back to school. We only had two pair of overalls to our name; therefore, Mom would wash one pair while we were wearing the other. They were to last all week, but it didn’t always work out exactly right, Mom never said much to us about it. I realize more and more what a jewel our mother was.

After a few years of riding the horse to school, the school board, of whom my father was a member, hired Mr. Ingram to drive a bus to haul us to school. The bus was actually Mr. Ingram’s 1928 Chevy car. He had to make several trips to gather up all the kids in the area, but his own kids had to walk to school. They lived only a quarter of a mile from our school. He hauled his kids when the weather was bad or extremely cold. They lived just north of the schoolhouse, so they could walk to school with the wind behind them, which helped.