By Chester Belcher
Chapter 1
You could tell that my one-room school was a backward school the first time you saw it. The back of the school was turned toward the road. The road used to be on the side of the school between the school and the creek. This gave us a little more playground. Crawford County has the lowest value land in the state of Indiana, but the trustee had the school built on less than one acre. I now invite you to take a tour of the inside of the Mifflin school. Just walk through the door. You probably do not need a key because the lock is usually broken. Young men often used the school to warm up while they were walking to the general store. I don’t know of anything that was ever stolen. The last thing they would ever want is a book.
Behind the door are two brooms and a mop. I was well acquainted with the brooms and mop because I was the school janitor for the last four years that I attended school. I walked over a mile to school and started a fire in the pot-bellied stove and had the school warming up before the other kids came to school. The first two of the four years, my brother, Paul, and I swept the school after the school day was over.
It was my choice to build the fires at school rather than stay home and milk cows before school time. Building a fire in a pot-bellied stove is more exciting than milking cows, especially when we had to milk the cows by hand.
We divided the money between us and the salary was three dollars a month. There was two paychecks, we each got six dollars at Christmas time and six dollars at the end of the year. Three dollars to spend and three dollars to put in the bank. The money was still in the bank when I started to college. It took me that long to learn that money could be taken from the bank. I thought money could only be put in the bank.
The 3rd and 4th years I was a janitor by myself, and the fourth year they raised the pay from twenty-four dollars a year to eighty dollars. I was making so much money I did not want to go to high school.
On the wall to your left you will notice a part of the structure that would not have been on the blueprints for the building but was probably the brainchild of the first teacher. There was a row of nails driven about halfway into the wall. They were used to hang up the coats and caps of the school kids. The overshoes used by the children in the wintertime were kicked against the wall.
There were four windows on this wall, and one day after school and the teacher had gone home, a couple of boys,Paul and I got in a pumpkin fight. A farmer had planted some pumpkins in his cornfield. All of us broke up a couple of pumpkins and started throwing pumpkin pieces at one another. One of the boys ran inside the school and was hollering out a window, that had two of its four panes broken out, at Paul. Well, Paul thought he could throw through the broken windows and hit the boy. You have probably guessed this, more window panes got broken.
We boys knew we were in trouble because the teacher was sure to question us about the last two window panes that were broken. The group pooled all their money, which consisted of a few pennies and three or four nickels. We had no idea what two window panes would cost, but I was chosen to go to the store and get the glass to repair our damage. My uncle owned the store and he wanted to know why I wanted the two window panes and when I told him for the school, he wanted to know why I was paying him instead of charging it to the trustee bill like all the suppliers.
Finally he told me the window panes were a nickel a-piece. I was glad to hear the price could be paid with our money pool, but I was more thrilled to get out of the store before my uncle asked more questions.
The tags were washed off the glass and the old putty was scraped out, but we had no new putty. The problem was solved by taking five or six thumb tacks from the teachers desk drawer and pushing them into the wooden window frames. Our problem was solved.
Half way down the wall an old person desk was pushed against the wall. On the desk was a white five gallon crock water container. The crock had four blue rings around it and a lid on the top with a water spigot near the bottom. Two three gallon metal buckets were also on the desk. Two of the older boys in the last four grades got to go to the store and pump water from the well and bring it back for drinking.
A wash pan sat on the floor below the water spigot on the water container, so we could wash our hands in case we fell in the mud or had some other catastrophe. Well, there was more water drank than was used for washing. One pan of water would do all day.
Going after water was about the most interesting thing about school. Everything went very well until we got a woman teacher who said older girls could also go after water. This meant that the boys could only go after water one-half of the time. This was my first encounter with equal rights for women.
Each of the students had a tin cup sitting on their desk. These cups were used by the students all year long. When school was out in the spring we would all take our cups home and our mothers would give them a good washing.
Walking farther along the wall you will see another row of nails driven one-half way into to wall. There is one difference, these nails are lower on the wall. That is because this half of the room is for the first four grades, and they could not reach as high to hang their coats and caps. However, this side is not partitioned off. The school is one big open room for all eight grades.
Around the corner on the end of the school were two shelves built high on the wall. The top shelf was used to store lunch buckets. Every student had to bring his lunch from home each morning. My lunch pail usually had meat and an egg and jelly sandwiches. They were all in biscuits baked that morning. Biscuits were baked from flour from wheat grown on our farm. We did not have the money to buy sliced bread from the store. The meat was always pork because we killed the butchered our own hogs, and the jelly was blackberry because blackberries grew wild and we kids picked berries in the summer and Mom made jelly from them. This was back during the depression and we bought very little from the store because money was very scarce. We always had plenty to eat because we raised our own food. We were not poor, we just did not have any money. It was a great day when we got tall enough to put our lunch bucket on the top shelf. The taller boys were the only ones that could master that feat.
Below that top shelf was one shelf that stored our most recent reference material. They were called World Books and are what now are called encyclopedias. World War II was being fought during my years in the Mifflin school, but according to our World Books World War I had not taken place. The latest edition of the World Books was 1914. The World Books were in good condition. The shelf was high enough that the younger students could not reach them and I cannot remember anyone ever getting an assignment that the books could be used.
Next to the shelves was a table that had to be used by the short kids to store their lunch buckets on. These kids were looked down on by the taller kids. Reaching the top shelf was as important to them as making the basketball team now.
The window on the west end of the school was the only one the younger kids could look out of when they were sitting in their seats. Three improvements were made in the school while I was attending. One of them was blinds for the windows. These blinds were the type that rolled up and down. The blinds were not fastened at the top. A pulley was at the top with a cord going through the pulley so that the blinds could be pulled half way down, then lowered by the cord to only cover the bottom of the windows.
The teacher was proud of the new blinds; the kids thought they were okay. For a short time. The blinds could not be used to cover the whole window or it would be too dark in school. Because the school had no electricity during my first three years, the teacher let the blinds down at the top and the bottom half of the window was covered. This let the light in and, also to the kids dislike, prevented them from looking out the window and watching traffic going up and down the road.
Some of the older boys got to thinking of what they could do to be able to look out the window again. They came up with a plan, which was to tie a knot in the window blind cord and cut off the cord below the knot. The job was one-half completed. Because the boys lost no time in getting back into the school after the teacher went home. The cords were cut and burned. The cords would have come in handy to use, but no one wanted to get caught with the evidence. The problem was solved. We could again see the traffic go by the school.
Oh! A crank pencil sharpener was screwed into the side of this window. Making sure your pencil needed sharpening at the right time, also gave an excuse to get a better look out the window.
There were three visual aids in the school, one sat on the floor beside the window. It was an old globe; very much outdated. However, it could have been used to find oceans and continents. It was not used for this purpose by any of the teachers over half dozen times during my tenure, and I went to this school long enough to be on tenure.
In the northwest corner of the school was our library which consisted of a small bookcase. Our library consisted of three shelves which were about three-fourths full. We only got new books one year and a total of four books that year. The trustee must have received a windfall of money that year.
Our second visual aid was a blackboard that ran the whole length of the north wall. The blackboard got a lot of use. It would have been almost impossible for the teacher to conduct school without the blackboard.
Half way down the blackboard was the teachers desk. It was a solid maple wood desk with a matching chair. Directly behind the teachers desk and above the blackboard was one of two pictures in the school. This was a picture of George Washington. The bottom part of George’s chest was plain white. The story was that the president died before the original was finished.
In front of the teachers desk was the recitation bench. The bench had a back to it and it faced the teachers desk. Each of the eight classes were called to the bench to recite to the teacher four times a day. Each session lasted for about ten minutes.
School started at eight o’clock each morning and at 9:30 A.M. there was a 15 minute recess. At 12:00 noon we had one hour off for lunch. Classes were held until 2:30 P.M. and we had another recess. School was over at 4:00 P.M. When each of the classes lasted about ten minutes, this left the teacher 10 to 15 minutes to help students with individual questions and prepare tests and grade papers. Needless to say, the teacher had a lot more homework to do than the students.
The teacher taught school for approximately eight hundred dollars a year and was very glad to have a job. This was during the depression and the depression lasted longer in Crawford County than any other place. We went from hard times into depression, back to hard times again.
One of the teachers always kept a switch on her desk. This was mostly for show but she made good use of it at times. I remember my brother Paul cutting rings around one of the switches with his pocket knife.
Ralph Hammond and I agreed one time that we would share our arithmetic answers. He was to do the addition and I was to do the subtraction and we were to exchange answers. Ralph was having trouble with his subtraction. I was good in math and I just could not read. Ralph gave me his answers but the teacher noticed that we were up to something and kept an eye on us. I did not have a chance to give Ralph my answers.
When we were called to recite the teacher would say, Third grade stand, walk and sit. We were about as well trained as a dog. The teacher gave us answers to our addition problems and all went well. Then came the subtraction problems and the teacher noticed Ralph was checking his paper but he had no answers.
The teacher stood Ralph up to give him a whipping. The switch she used was the one Paul had cut rings around. The switch broke into a half dozen pieces the first lick. Ralph was given the assignment to cut a switch over the noon hour. He had to think about the whipping he was going to get all of this time. I felt very bad for Ralph because I had got him into this trouble. I did not feel bad enough to tell the teacher the whole truth. Ralph did not tell the teacher either. I guess that proves there is honor among students, Ralph had the honor, though, and I had none. Ralph was a smart boy, but he did not use good judgment this time. He cut a willow switch big enough to whip a horse with and the teacher really worked him over.
At the end of the blackboard was the last corner. The first corner had brooms and a mop. The second had shelves, the third corner was the library and the fourth corner had nothing in it. Well, a lot of the time it had a student standing in it. This was one of the ways the teacher used for punishment. I remember the corner very clearly because I was in it many times. I stood in that corner until I became cross-eyed and pigeon-toed.
The second improvement made to the school was electric lights and lights were all that we got. When the Rural Electric Membership Corporation, or the R.E.M.C. as it was referred to, was built past the school on Union Township Trustee had no money to have the school wired for electricity. Electricity was to be brought to the school without any charge at the time the lines were built. However, if we waited to a later date, there would be a charge.
The teacher and parents decided they would raise the money and get the schoolhouse wired. It was decided to have a pie supper to raise money. The girls all brought a pie to school one night and the boys bid on the pies and, hopefully got their girl friends pie. If he did not have enough money to buy his girl friends pie, hopefully he could buy his favorite kind of pie. Some of the men in the crowd bought pies to keep the price up. Therefore, all of the girl’s pies brought a good price. The men gave the ticket to a boy who did not have enough money to buy a pie. Hey! That is the way I got to eat a pie with a girl that night.
The prettiest girl and the ugliest man were elected. Each person could vote as often as he wished. Each vote, however, cost a penny. There was a tight race for the prettiest girl, and about fifteen dollars was raised. My cousin, Doris Felker, won the contest and Joyce Knight was runner up. The contest for ugliest man didn’t create much interest and I don’t remember who won.
Enough money was raised to get the schoolhouse wired. The outside wire was run to my favorite corner because it was closest to the power line. The fuse box and the only light switch was on the wall close to the corner. However, the door to school was all the way down the hall. A person walked into the door and then up the wall to turn on the light. This saved some on the cost of wiring the building. Also to save money, the wire was run through pipe to a spot near the teachers desk; from there the wire was run to the middle of the upper grades. All of the wiring was in plain sight because this was less work and cost less than running the wire in the attic.
Plain, clear light bulbs were used. One hundred watt bulbs were used over the students desks, but a clear one hundred and fifty watt bulb was screwed in above the teachers desk. This clear bulb gave such a bright light that whenever the students looked up at George Washington’s picture they would get the sun grins.
Hey, we walked past one of the visual aids. If you will back up a few steps we can take a look at it. Above the blackboard was mounted a box frame holding five rolled up maps of the world. The maps rolled down like a window blind so they could be seen and then the spring inside the roll would let them roll up again.
Some of the boys got the maps down and rolled the springs real tight and hung the maps in the frame again. The teacher would pull a map down and the spring would be so tight that, wamb, the map would roll up on its own. A man teacher was too smart for us. When it happened to him he called a couple of tall boys up and had them unwind the springs. He had no more trouble with the maps.
On the east end of the schoolhouse was one window, and a ladder was nailed to the wall so people could climb up to the attic. The attic had no floor and was not finished. So, we will not climb the ladder. This brings us back to the door. We will go out the door, close it, and leave my Mifflin School memories inside.
As we look around outside the school, we can see that the school is located in the little town of Mifflin. The school is located about 300 to 400 yards west of the general store. The general store is also used as the post office. The town has a feed mill, four houses and a small Methodist church. It is located at the junction of three crushed limestone rock roads and it is three miles to the nearest state road. This is also the junction of two creeks, or creaks as we called them. Mifflin is located in southern Indiana about 10 miles from the Ohio River and half way between Louisville, KY, and Evansville, IN.
The first year that I attended school, there were two roughly constructed outhouses, one for girls and one for boys. Although the outhouses were crude, they were flush type. They set on the creak bank and every time the creak flooded and got out of its banks the outhouses flushed out with water from the creak. The government program of W.P.A. built little white outhouses for rural people. They also built outhouses for rural schools. They were red, two holers, with basement under them and a wall built as a screen in front of them. If the wind blew the door open while we were in there, we were out of sight. They were real nice. This was my first experience with Federal Aid to Education.
In the early 1960s Federal Aid to Education was discussed in the congress of the United States. One prominent senator said, If we have Federal Aid to Education, Uncle Sam will be sitting on every school board in the United States. If he had asked any student in the Mifflin School, they could have told him Uncle Sam was never seen sitting in our facilities.
A coal house was also located on the school ground. Coal for fuel to use in the pot-bellied stove was stored in this building. When it rained the boys used to come stand in the coal house. This was our own private club house. When it rained at the noon hour, the boys stood along the wall of the coal house and ate their lunches. It was not the cleanest place, but at our age it sure beat eating in the school house with the girls.
All of this tramping around over the coal soon broke the coal down into small pieces and dust. As one of the responsibilities of janitor, a woman teacher had me to keep the fire burning in the stove all day long. Very small pieces of coal and coal dust can be burned in a stove if the dust is well mixed with hot burning coals already in the stove. When the dust is dumped into the stove and not mixed well with the burning coals, gases are formed that cause a small explosion. I knew this, but the teacher did not know it. I dumped in the coal dust and sat back and waited for the explosion. The stove would go boom, the stove door would bang open and down would come the stove pipe. The teacher and I would put the stove pipe back up and the rest of the kids would get an extra recess to go outside. Ralph Hammond would turn around to me and whisper to me, Blow it up, Chester Lee. I was always ready for a little excitement and he liked the extra recesses.
Our one school bus was certainly different from present day buses. The bus driver built a covered wooded box onto a farm wagon. A door was built on this tall box at the back of the wagon. There was a glass window on the front of the enclosed wagon. The driver sat inside and drove two horses. The seven or eight kids that rode the bus got to the school on time and the bus was painted yellow. What more could they ask for?
One man teacher did not drive a car. However, his son, who was a farmer, drove him to school in bad weather. In good weather, and when his son was busy on the farm, the teacher rode a horse to school.
Outside on a pole by the school house door was the school bell. A rope was fastened to the bell and the teacher would pull the rope and ring the bell for school to start, at the end of recess, and at the end of the noon hour. Some of the people thought the school should fly the flag. This was during the war. My father volunteered to cut down a tree and bring it to school for a flag pole. Dad was always interested in getting something that would last a long time.
He cut down a cedar tree because they do not rot in the ground as fast as most poles that could be used. Good decision, so far. However, a cedar tree has a lot of limbs and that means a lot of knots. He cut the limbs off as close as he could with an ax. A rope and pulley were fastened to the top of the pole and the pole was set in the ground. The flag was raised and all was well for four or five days, and then the wind blew. The flag was whipped around the pole and caught on the rough knots on the pole. The flag pole lasted for 20 years, but the flag lasted only five days.
Our ball diamond was very small due to the fact that the school was built on a small plot of ground. The north side of the school was used as a backstop. Nobody ran through first base. A butternut tree about 15 inches in diameter served as first base. A 36 inch high woven wire fence with two strands of barbed wire on the top was nailed to the back side of the tree. The fence was on the property line of the school and a corn field. No player slid into second base because it was on the side of a crushed limestone road. Across the road was another corn field and any ball knocked across the fence was a home run. A ball that went over either fence stopped the game.
We had only one ball and we had to find it before the game could continue. We used a rubber ball when any of the players had one. We made a ball when we did not have one. The tops of old Rockford work socks were unraveled and the string was wrapped around a one-half inch nut from a bolt. This made an odd-looking ball, but it worked very well. Our bat was made from a two inch by three inch board about 30 inches long.
There was a slight problem that we had to work around between the pitchers mound and third base. A big elm tree about 30 inches in diameter was located between the pitchers mound and third base. The third base was on the property line between the school and a potato and turnip field. A few ground rules were made for our special ball park.
After World War II started, money became easier to come by and Paul bought a baseball, a bat and a catchers glove. Nobody else had a ball glove, so we had to change a rule. If a player caught a baseball in the air it still was an out; however, if any team players caught a ball on the first bounce it was also an out.
As I look back over the more than 50 years since I started as a first grader at this small white weather board school with a red metal roof, I am concerned about our conduct as students. Students today would be expelled from school for some of the things we did. Then we were only considered to be mischievous, or just having fun.
Adults during my school years also played jokes on one another more than adults do today. Ralph’s mother had him buy an alarm clock at the country store. At noon Ralph and I went to the store and bought a spring operated clock. This was before Ralph’s family had electricity. Uncle Leroy said he would wind the clock and set the time. We did not know it, but he also set the alarm.
That afternoon during school the alarm went off on the clock. The clock was sitting on Ralph’s desk and the teacher finally found out where the noise was coming from. She grabbed the box and shook it real hard, but that did not stop the noise. The box lid fell to the floor, the warranty flew out, and the teacher looked all over the clock before she found the right button to turn off the alarm. All of the kids were laughing, but the teacher was not laughing. She was about to give Ralph another whipping, but I told her my uncle had wound the clock when Ralph bought it. I got Ralph in trouble one time, but I saved his hide this time.
To Be Continued
The Author Chester Lee Belcher from Rockport, Indiana passed away in September of 2021.
We are very thankful that we were able to capture and preserve some of his memories and stories, before he passed away.
Published U.S. Legacies January 2006
© Copyright January 2006,
All Rights Reserved by American Legacies and the Chester L. Belcher family.
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