Why That Good Ole One Room School Was So Good

Some Introductory Musings

Maybe it was because I had just watched the movie “Boyhood,” and was thinking back on my own boyhood days, or because I had just read about some new innovations in education.

Whatever it was, I found myself thinking about Prairie View School (PVS)– a one-room school 1 ½ miles south and 2 miles east of Weldon, Illinois– where I faithfully attended for 8 years.

Prairie View School – Having Evolved from Bright White to Worn and Faded Gray.

Having turned 5 in February and really angry—I gave my mother an earful on why it wasn’t fair that my two neighbor friends could go to school and I couldn’t. Shocked by my unusual fuming and ranting — but to her eternal credit — she didn’t shut me up — she just listened.

Finally, she took off her apron, straightened her dress, and matter-of-factly said, “Get in the car. We are going to go talk with Mrs. Ball.”

Nothing scientific. Mrs. Ball, the teacher at Prairie View, simply looked me over, listened to my mother and I for 5 minutes, and said “Okay, we’ll have a trial period.”

At the end of my trial period, when I overheard Mrs. Ball say to my mother “He’s a __ little devil,” my heart skipped a beat.

I hadn’t heard the blank word, and worried that my plan to go to school was doomed.

But, somehow, I was in (little devil or not), and attended Prairie View School from age 5 through age 13.

Let me tell you, through my experiences, why I think PVS was a wonderful place.

 My First Exciting Discovery

Very early on, as I sat at my little desk working on an arithmetic worksheet, I suddenly discovered that I could eavesdrop on Mrs. Ball, over in the corner, teaching the 7^th and 8^th graders.

What they were talking about was interesting to me, and for 8 years, I multitasked- listening to other grade level groups while completing my worksheets.

You talk about enrichment and meeting individual needs.  I was never bored again!

My First Job

When Mrs. Wene, my 4^th grade teacher, asked me to come to school early to help her carry in cobs and coal heat up the stove,  I was really excited! And she paid me 50 cents a week to do it!!

I felt proud to be chosen, I felt trusted. I felt competent. I felt responsible. I felt satisfaction about success.

Come to think of it, that’s how I felt later in life about all my other jobs.

Being Taught life skills and attitudes… on my first job!

My Early Acting Career

Mrs. Wene didn’t ask me to be in a two person Christmas Play with my second cousin, Sharon Carr- she just acted as if it was a given—and a hillbilly romantic skit, no less.

I received raves from all the parents, and that experience made me want to later take parts in high school plays, and feel comfortable in front of people.

One of the many extra curricular activities at PVS —building confidence and learning how to do things.

My First Taste of Leadership

 During the war, we had a scrap metal drive- the “Dive Bombers” and the “Submarines” teams competing- to help the war effort.

The Dive Bombers Scrap Drive, October, 1942

I was leader of the Dive Bombers- organizing the team, planning our collection and delivery schedules, and getting others on my team to collect a lot of scrap.

We were the winning team, and in retrospect I considered it my first successful project experience.

Meaningful learning and leadership training through projects. What Progressive Education!

 My First Sex Education

One day, not long after I started school, all the boys hightailed it to the outdoor boys toilet at recess.

There, in close proximity to the smelly latrine, I had my first introduction to sex education.

I can truly say, looking back, that what I learned about the birds and bees from the boys at Prairie View School was pretty accurate, and sufficed until I read certain library books at Illinois State University.

Cooperative learning and Sex Education at the same time! Wow!

  Me, Thee, and The Ciphering Contest

 At PVS, the teacher would have us go up to the blackboard and to do long multiplication or division calculations.

If you finished first, you took your seat and waited on the others. I was hands-down the fastest cipherer in the school.

When we visited the “town school” in Weldon and a ciphering contest came up, I thought “No sweat, “I always finish first.”

Lo and behold, I was still ciphering away when a slight girl named Ada Katherine Pearl was already sitting down, with a big smile on her face.

I learned humility that day, and that there is always someone in this world who can do something better than you can.

Active involvement and developing self knowledge—in PVS!

P.S. Many years later, when I was a Professor of Mathematics

at Illinois State University, my friend, Ada Katherine Pearl, knocked on my office door.

I was very quick to make it clear that, under the circumstances, there would be no ciphering contests in the mathematics department that day.

The Essay Contest

Mrs. O’Connor, my 7^th grade teacher at PVS, asked me to stay after school one day and told me that I should enter a three county essay contest for 7^th and 8^th graders that offered a prize of $25 for the winner.

I thought “I could use $25,” so I entered.

My essay, “From Little Acorns Big Oaks Grow,” won the contest, and was printed in full in The Weldon Record, a local paper of some renown.

 Entering and winning that essay contest probably sowed the seed of interest that launched my career as a writer.

Special attention to every student and another teacher who cares. Thank You, Mrs. O’Connor!

Mrs O’Connor and her Prairie View Students, 1946

Summary- What a Place in Which to Learn!

In PVS, the student teacher ratio was 15 to 1, and the 16 people in that place were one special family.

If PVS is any indication, perhaps all the “innovative approaches” we fuss about in education today aren’t as new as we think, and were being used when we didn’t even talk about them.

And maybe what’s really important is providing a loving, family setting like Prairie View School, in which a conscientious teacher cares about her students and, like each of my PVS teachers, does her very best.

Five Full Blown Farm Fears- What One Farm Boy Remembers

There were several scary things about the farm where I grew up.

I call the scary things the “Full-blown Farm Fears, and they may just have, as they say, “helped develop my character.”

Anyway, here is how I remember them.

There Were These Things Called Snakes

The first fear, without a doubt, was of SNAKES!

Whenever a brave, but unaware, snake made its way into our yard and was spotted by my mother Ruby, the result can only be described by the phrase, “all hell broke loose!”

“GET THE HOE! GET THE HOE!, ”my mother would shout, in her loudest and most authoritative voice, causing the chickens in the yard to scatter to the winds. All the troops (children, and whoever else was there) mobilized immediately, and rapidly delivered my mother’s weapon of choice — a garden hoe.

It was as if the President of the United States had learned via the red phone that the enemy was within our gates! We must defend ourselves against the attackers! And Commander Ruby led the assault.

With approximately 50 quick and vigorous chops, seemingly given in the time frame of about 5 seconds, she made triply sure that the snake had met its demise, if not its total dismemberment.

As quickly as it had started, calm reigned again, and it inevitably became my task to dispose of what was left of the snake.

You can now probably understand how a fear of snakes quickly developed within me, and still affects me today.

Yet, the snake experience also helped me develop resourcefulness, because as I grew older, I would plant a dead snake, which I had shot with my BB gun, in the most appropriate place, and wait in excited anticipation until my mother spied it.

Many a dead snake got totally demolished in its afterlife by Ruby’s trusty garden hoe.

 Aren’t Windmills Gentle and Harmless?

The second big farm fear was of the WINDMILL!

It may seem strange that the windmill would create a farm fear factor, because it was such a helpful thing– pumping water out of the ground for horses, cattle, and us.

But the big fear came from the windmill’s simple on/shut off device– with it’s macabre accomplice, the high wind.

The device was a smooth stick handle tied to a wire that went up to the propeller on top.

When you wanted to turn the windmill on, you released the handle, loosening the wire and allowing the propeller blades to be turned by the wind.

When you wanted to shut the windmill off, you pulled the stick down against the tower piece, thus tightening the wire and putting the brake on the propeller to stop it.

The problem came, however, when the windmill was turned on and the wind suddenly came up. A very high wind could turn the propeller so fast that it would either break the pump or go flying off the windmill if it wasn’t breaked by pulling the handle down– and that took “three men and a boy.”

Now comes the fear. If the windmill was on and the wind came up, calmness did not abound.

My mother approached this as impending disaster. “Go turn off the windmill! Hurry! The wind is coming up fast!”, she would shout, as if the lives of all of us entirely depended on completing this task in at least one millisecond.

The intensity of it all put the fear of the Lord in me, especially since I, being a very fast runner, usually got there first (even though a strong wind blowing at a rate equal my weight tried mightily to keep me from getting there), and usually was unable to shut it off.

I can still feel the relief that ensued when a couple of us were able to pull that stick down and literally bring the propeller to a screeching halt.

I think the windmill experience must have helped me learn to deal with stress and pressure, because there sure was plenty of it when the wind began to blow on the farm.

Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice

Oh Yeah??? Bill Odaffer’s barn just down the road was struck twice–burning to the ground each time–during the time I lived on the farm.

I remember getting out of bed during a storm and driving to Bill Odaffer’s farm with my parents to see if we could be of some help the first time it happened. All of the neighbors were there, and it was a roaring fire that could not be put out.

The second time, in my mind, was a rerun of the first. There was talk in the neighborhood that Bill might want to consider putting lightning rods on his next barn, but as I recall, for reasons beyond everyone’s comprehension, he never did.

By now you probably know that the third full-blown fear on the farm was LIGHTNING! Witnessing the barn burnings greatly heightened the conviction in my mind that this could really happen to us!

Our house was built okay, but it was all wood, and just a little porous. When a severe thunderstorm came upon us, you really felt that the lightning was going to tear that house asunder—especially if you, like me, slept in the upstairs, pretty close to the great outdoors.

I think the coming of lightning in the middle of the night while I was sleeping upstairs in that old farmhouse gave new meaning to what my Sunday School teacher, Ernest Dickey, always said about standing in the need of prayer.

 Isn’t Fire a Good Thing?

The fourth full-blown farm fear was the uncontrollable GARDEN FIRE!

After harvest, it was fine to burn the dead grass off the garden on a quiet day, but if the wind suddenly came up, as it often did, a garden fire could get out of hand.

And there was a large gasoline tank just east of our garden, and if you are familiar with the Midwest, you know that the winds always blow from west to east.

My mother seemed to have this amazing knack of stirring up the wind.

One quiet day my mother set out to burn off a small southwest corner of the garden. Out of the blue, a good ole strong west wind came up. I was just over 2 years old at the time, but I’ve always had this feeling that I vividly remember this incident.

My mom and I were the only ones home. As the wind came up, she ran in the house, placed me in the kitchen, and shut all the doors.

Then she ran to the garden to try to stop the blazing fire before it got to that tank and, in her mind, blew us all to kingdom come.

Using superhuman force, beating the fire, running for water, and throwing dirt, she did finally contain the fire just short of the gas tank, and before having to deal, again in her mind, with a scorched earth aftershock.

When she returned to the house, she found me under attack by a baby gosling–whose box I had knocked over– and screaming bloody murder.

So I was saved by the firefighter hero of 1936, but have always been leary of garden fires and geese!

 Don’t Go Near the Ditch!!

The fifth, and final major fear on our farm was the DREDGE DITCH! My mother, with all her good traits, was deathly afraid of the dredge ditch.

Part of the fear probably came from her experience of very nearly drowning as a teenager.

But when I was growing up, it seemed that she thought that if any of her children got near the ditch, it would take a couple of gulps and completely swallow them up!

She must have transferred her image of the spring rain ditch (which could get pretty violent) to the lazy summer ditch, because for whatever reason, it was like pulling teeth to get her to let us “go down to the ditch.”

The fear of the ditch was heightened by the fact that land area under the bridge often served as a camping place for Gypsies that came through the area. Since the bridge wasn’t far from our house, and Gypsies had a penchant for coming to a nearby house to beg or “borrow” things, my mother was in a dither when the Gypsies arrived.

She would send my sister Jane or I to the door to tell the Gypsies something like “my mother is busy and the workers will be here any minute for dinner,”

The dredge ditch, in some strange way, got associated with the Gypsies–giving it an even more ominous character.

In the end, I was able to gain freedom to explore and enjoy the dredge ditch in both summer and winter, but my mother’s fear of water, in a small degree, must have transferred to me, and I admit to grabbing my kid’s arms when they got too close to the edge of a river or lake.

Suffice it to say that finding a way to not totally take on my mother’s fear of the “ditch” may have been an experience in developing courage for me.

Conclusion

Someone once said that “our fears paint the heavens for us.”   That may be true to a degree, but I can truthfully say that I didn’t panic when I met my first rattlesnake in Arizona, I love windmills, I gave my kids and grand kids a convincing argument that lightning is natural and beneficial, I love bonfires, and I can swim a couple lengths of the pool.

The Farm! Some healthy fears, but a great place in which to grow up!

Christmas When I Was 7 Years Old- Dec 25, 1941

Time to Dredge Up Really Old Christmas Memories

Boy, do I have a bank of precious memories about when our children were experiencing their first Christmas!  It was awesome!

But the joy goes back even further, so I’m moved to relate how I felt about Christmas when I was 7 years old.

Going to See Santa Claus on Christmas Eve

It was the day before Christmas, and we had just gotten over 2 feet of snow-with a west wind having fun making it into 5 foot drifts.

My dad was in a quandary. We all sensed it, and we all knew why.

Every year, we went to a Christmas Eve program at Prairie View School, our little one room school about a mile and a half from our house. The problem this year was, how could we get there, with all that snow?

If worse came to worse, we could hitch up our work horses to the storm buggy, and they would get us there.

But the storm buggy had sort of cellophane windows, plenty of cracks, and a rough ride– not a very appealing mode of transportation.

My dad finally chose the other alternative, and put chains on the tires of our 1936 Plymouth automobile. We slid around a lot, but we made it.

I couldn’t have been happier. Santa was there, and he gave me an orange and a candy cane.

We didn’t have many oranges or candy canes during the year at our house, so this made Christmas special.

I thought Santa looked and smelled a lot like our neighbor, Guy Mawhiney, but I didn’t give that much more thought.

All the neighbors there sang some Christmas Carols, and a little romantic Christmas skit was put on by the 4th,5th, and 6th graders.

Our family was in good spirits, singing as many verses of “Jingle Bells”  as we could remember, while my dad tried to keep the car on the road as he caromed through the drifts on the way home.

Greeting Christmas Day at Home

Christmas day came, and I eagerly got out of my warm feather bed into the cold room, and joined the rest of the family-headed for the living room.

My dad had stoked up the big coal heating stove in the center of the room, and it was burning vigorously, bringing heat to that important part of the house, where the 4 foot Christmas tree sat on the sewing machine.

Sure enough, there was my stocking, with another orange, and some more candy in it.  I also found some new socks and underwear, a ball bearing out of our combine, and a bow and arrow my dad had carved out of wood for me.

We all opened our presents, and were excited and happy that somehow Santa Claus had found our humble home-snow drifts and all.

Not Just Any Christmas Day

But this wasn’t just any Christmas day. Eighteen days before, the Japanese had attacked our soldiers at Pearl Harbor, and our nation was at war.

I knew that my father and mother were worried-even scared, and I was scared to.

My parents had their ear glued to our old battery radio, and it seemed that President Roosevelt was doing a lot of talking to the American people.

I heard it then, and saw it in print many years later.  One of the things he did was to warn adults that they must turn to “the stern tasks and formidable years that lie before us,” so the children will not be “denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”

And perhaps he repeated his inaugural statement “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

A Lesson in How to Not Fear Fear

Notwithstanding the apprehension of the day, my mother, Ruby Edith Gray Odaffer- even though Christmas was not her favorite holiday- was not about to let us kids get caught up in the fear and concern that gripped the people in the United States.  Not on Christmas Day.  Not on her watch.

She let it be known that it would be a special day by giving a hint that she would be making cream puffs and caramel popcorn balls to help aid in the festivities.

The old cook stove in the kitchen, with cobs and coal that I had helped bring in, was already boiling water, and generally giving the impression that it was ready to cook anything in sight.

It was a bright and sunny day, and our farm was a virtual winter wonderland.  We had lots of snow, and the breaths of all the farm animals seemed to sort of steam up the barnyard.

My dad (Ray Odaffer) had finished milking the cows, as he always faithfully did, and had brought buckets of fresh milk to the house.

My mother ran it through the old DeLaval cream separator, and lo and behold, the milk came out one spout and the cream came out the other.

That cream would form the staple for those cream puffs we were so excited about.

My job, even on Christmas day, was to take a bucket with a long nipple at the bottom, filled partway with milk and supplement to feed one of the young calves that had been born just a few days earlier.

So, after savoring my Christmas gifts for a while, I put on all my heavy clothes, my hat with ear tabs, and my gum boots, and trudged through the snow with that bucket.

After feeding the calf and some other chores, I didn’t go back to the house just yet.

It was such an adventure when it snowed in the wintertime!

I went looking for, finding, and following the rabbit tracks-hoping to see a Christmas bunny.

It wasn’t hard to do, and pretty soon, after kicking a snowy woodpile, not one, but two chilly bunnies jumped out and scampered across the garden.

As the day progressed, I played a with my sisters Jane and Wanda, ate a wonderful Christmas dinner, with meat from our recent butchering of a steer (the ring of fat around it and all), noodles, and all the trimmings.

And, of course, the afternoon was filled with cream puffs,popcorn balls, and a rousing round of rummy!

In the evening we listened to that battery radio, because, after all, it was Wednesday evening, and we didn’t want to miss Gabriel Heater, Jack Benny, and Lum and Abner.

What’s the Message Here?

As I look back on my 7 year old Christmas, I find it amazing.

We were poor as church mice, living on a farm with no electricity, no bathrooms, no telephone, no bathtub, and no running water.

We didn’t have enough money to buy Christmas gifts, so mostly our gifts were homemade, and were few and far between.

And we were embarking on the worst war this nation has ever experienced,

Worry and concern could certainly have permeated that day.  But it didn’t.

So, with all the possibilities for gloom,  I remember being really happy and very content with that day.  It was a wonderful Christmas, and, in a sense, it seemed like a wonderful life.

I didn’t know “how bad off I(we) were” because there was a spirit of love, caring, and camaraderie in our home that seemed to override what we lacked in material goods, modern conveniences, and our own personal safety.

There was an undercurrent of positiveness that simply took precedence over everything else.

Perhaps that is what Christmas is all about.