My First Day of School

I am the third of six girls. We lived on a farm on the border between New York and Vermont. I was seven when I started school. My mother didn't want me to go before then because I helped out a lot with the younger ones. We spent most of our time on the farm amusing ourselves because there was no TV, yet. At least, if you were the kid of a farmer, you didn't have a TV to watch.

I was scared. We didn't see very many people we weren't related to. Anna and Millie already went to school. Anna wanted to be a teacher. She was only eleven, but her mind seemed to have been made up. Several times a week, she'd make us all sit down on boxes in the pantry while she taught us our letters using the walls for a board. She yelled a lot when we didn't want to follow her rules. She said if we disobeyed her, she could hit us with our father's belt. We thought school was a place where you got yelled at a lot and hit with a belt if you were naughty.

We lived about a mile and a half from school if you only counted from the main highway. There were no buses for our school so we all walked. In the country, people have huge metal mailboxes, probably to hold all those seed catalogues and Farm Journals.

That morning, I puttered along behind my sisters, hoping a hawk would swoop down out of the sky and carry me off so I wouldn't have to go to school. I never saw the mailbox, but it saw me. Later, I told my mother the mailbox chased me down the road and attacked me.

I arrived at school with blood dripping down my face and a big cut on my forehead. Miss Sparling, the teacher, had my sister Anna clean me up. She didn't like that much. She told me if I didn't behave and stop making trouble for her and the teacher that I would get the belt. So now I was in pain and scared of getting hit as well as just scared of other people.

It was 1952 and our school was one of the few remaining one-room schoolhouses left in the United States. Our seats were wooden benches with desks on the back of them for the kid behind you. They had holes for ink wells, but we only used pencils and crayolas. The top of the desk lifted up so you could put stuff inside. I thought it was neat to have a place where I could keep my own stuff, and not have to share it with my sisters.

She gave us each a yellow pencil, a packet of eight crayolas and a tablet of paper with a big red head of an Indian chief on the front. It was all mine and I didn't have to share it.

On her desk, Miss Sparling had a big brass bell that she rang when she wanted us all to be quiet. She rang the bell and took attendance. I managed to say "hear" at the right time. Then we all said the "Pledge of Allegiance". I knew it because Anna made us learn it. Then we all sang the national anthem and sat back down.

The first grade was called to the front of the room. There were only two other kids. Miss Sparling gave us each some shapes cut out of construction paper. We were supposed to glue them on to a sheet of paper to form an owl. I didn't get all of my pieces.

I was scared and I didn't know what to do. I was afraid if I said anything, I'd get the belt. If I did it wrong because I didn't have all the parts, I'd still get the belt. I didn't know which to do, so I cried. Miss Sparling gave me a hug and it was all right after that. I never saw her use the belt on anyone.

Inside the school room was a sign next to the pot bellied stove that said "in" on one side and "out" on the other side. You made it say "Out" when you went out. You went out to use the toilet.

It was a wooden outhouse with two sections, one for boys and one for girls. In the toilet was a wooden bench with a hole cut in it for you to sit on while you did what you came in there for. There was a Montgomery Wards catalogue to use for toilet paper. If you were bored with school, you could go out there and if you could stand the smell, you could look at the catalogue and wish your parents were rich so they could buy you the toys you wanted.

In the corner of the room near the front, there was a huge blue delft ceramic barrel. It held about five gallons of water. This was our drinking fountain. We all used the same aluminum dipper to drink out of. At least when we were out sick, we were all out sick.

Some time during the morning, Miss Sparling called two of the big boys and us first graders to the front of the room. She sent us all to the spring for water. Our job was to keep the barrel from falling off the wagon. It was fun. We took our time coming back.

That day I had a potted meat sandwich and an apple for lunch. We all ate at our desks with recess afterwards. If it was a bad day, we stayed inside and learned to square dance. As it turned out, school wasn't such a bad place. That Christmas, I got to taste ice cream for the first time.