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Subject: [PaCambri] One room schools
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 17:57:56 EST


Speaking of one room school, Cambria Heights ran them up until about
1960, transporting the children in buses. I attended the Nagle school for one
year in the 1950s, before the St. Bernard's school reopened.
Most of you probably remember the old mimeograph papers you got, the ones
with the funny smell and the purple lines? Maybe you got to turn the crank
on the old machines, or staple the pages together. When I used them in school,
you use masters, on which you typed or drew.
I once saw a teacher from a one room school using a different method.
She had a tray, smaller, but like, a jellyroll pan. She mixed up a powder,
poured it in, and waited for it to jell something like Jell. Since she did not use
a refrigerator, I would think it was a very strong mixture of something like
unflavored gelatin. She had a large thick pencil, with a purple center. She
wrote, or drew, on a page with the pencil, then put it onto the jell and
flattened and rubbed it in, until the pencil marks were absorbed into the jell.
Then she laid other papers on top, rubbed them, and they picked up the purple
lines. She must have learned to write backwards, as what you got was a mirror
image.
At the Nagle School, there was just one large room, with a small
stage-like platform at the front. The one side was closed in with what was the
entrance hall. The other end was closed in with a large storage closet. The only
blackboards were at the back of the "stage," behind the teacher's desk. In one
corner of the "stage" was the water jar, which looked like a large barrel
cooler with spout at the bottom. There was one tin cup. They boys were assigned
to carry it to a spring up the road and fill it each morning. Behind it was a
stool and a dunce cap. My teacher used them, and she also used the paddle.
The two sides had windows, and on the one, near the back, was a wood and
coal stove. Along that walls, under the window, were benches and clothes
hooks. You sat on the benches to take off your boots, snow pants and coats, and
hung them on the hooks. You put your boots and lunch boxes or bags [preferable,
because then you could fold them up and did not have to carry a box home].
We had an hour off for lunch, and played all sorts of games. I usually was
reading. I even walked home reading a book.
I am not sure what was at the back of the room, more closets then
probably, as this was before they build the outhouses onto the back, and you still
had to use the outside ones.
At that time, this particular school had three grades. Facing the
teacher, the first grade was on the left, the second grade in the middle, and the
third grade on the right, the side with the stove. There were about twenty or so
in both the first and second grades, but that year there were only five third
graders. They sat in double wide, connected desks. The boys were all "bad,"
so each one had his own seat. The one girl shared with whichever second
grader was the top in the class, based on "spelling bee" type quizzes given in
every subject. Competition for this seat was intense. The first and second
grade each had a separate seat, the type with storage under the slanted top with
an ink well and a pencil groove, and the seat of the child ahead of you
attached to the front of the desk. This made seven rows of seats.
It was my worst year of school, because my first grade teacher simply had
not taught that way, or progressed as far. For example, the one room school
taught the times table up to five in first grade, and I had no idea what they
were. It was also the year I learned the most, because I picked up what I had
missed from the first graders, learned all the second grade material, and all
the third grade material. The teacher was extremely sarcastic, and made fun
of you for any mistake, which made you afraid to talk. I can still remember
her.
I had taught myself to read before I was five, and was really upset I
couldn't go to school with my friends when they went, because I was too young.
It didn't take me long to read all the textbooks from cover to cover from all
three grades, but Math isn't like that, and I really thought I just never
caught up. Later, I discovered a have a rare form of dyslexia that operates only
with numbers, not with letters.
The time of the school year we liked best was hunting season, because
with all the crazy men with guns in the woods, my parents or grandparents or
uncles would drive us to school. This was after a hunter shot a black and white
cow in mistake for a deer. My grandfather posted everything, and patrolled the
land with a gun chasing hunters after that.
We had to walk about a mile each way, a little of it along the
highway, but most of it along the dirt road and through some abandoned fields and
roads. We thought nothing of it. There were two of us. If one was ill, someone
drove the other. This was much harder then as my mother did not drive, but
there was usually someone and some vehicle on the farm to drive us.
Going to and from school we always saw the miners going to work at Rich
Hill or Hastings Fuel mines. Going to work, they were crowed into cars, si
tting in the trunks, or the back of pickups, but clean. On the way home they were
filthy, looking like a lot of minstrels in blackface, because mines did not
have showers or changing facilities then. My mother washed the farm clothes
and mining clothes--we had a house coal mine on our farm--with special soap she
made, and spent hours patching the holes from the chemicals in the coal. At
least we had a bathroom; many of my friends did not and their mothers had to
heat water on the coal stove and then use a laundry tub to bathe. Washing out
the lunch box was our job, and we hated it.
Everyone used wringer washers, and you changed from school clothes into
play or work clothes the second you came home. It was just too hard to wash
them and iron them. Almost everything had to be ironed, with an electric dry
iron, no steam irons. You had to dampen the clothes first. No permapress or tee
shirts or jeans then. My grandmother had a mangle, a long cloth roller with
a curved iron part that closed over it. I learned to use it to do sheets and
pillowcases, but grandma and my aunts could do even white dress shirts.
Everyone dressed up for church on Sunday, and the Catholic school boys wore white
shirts, so there were lots of white shirts to iron. Automatic washing machines
were a long time in coming because of limited water supply on the farm, even
in good times. There was a really bad drought in the early 1950s when our
springs gave out and we had to haul water. The nearest Laundromat was in
Ebensburg, and it might as well have been on the moon. No one then would have
believed our kids and grandkids would board a bus and attend Bishop Carroll.
Could you share your experiences or your parents experiences with us?
Marilyn Kline Washington

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