THE ONE-ROOM SCHOOL HOUSE

Down the road past the old church and few hundred yards was were it sat;  it was a wooden framed small building and when I opened the front door and looked to my left there was one room.  In the middle of the room was a big pot-bellied wood stove and around the stove was about 14 desks where students would seat; facing straight ahead was a black board, and to the right was the teacher's desk.

I was four years old the first time I walked in that room and there were five other young people walking in with me.  Our teacher was a lady who lived across the road from our old farm and her name was Alma Todd.  She had a husband who was a barber down in Groton NY, and his name was Leo.  He did a booming business seeing that he was the only one in town.  He did an excellent job.  He charged 50 cents per hair cut and he kept them in a Mason Jar until it was time to pull down the shades and hang out his "CLOSED" sign.  From there he would quickly take his old car and park it beside a tavern down Main Street and walk into the bar about 5 in the afternoon.  For 35 cents they would pour him about 3 fingers of wine and he would drink until late a night when his money almost ran out.  My friend Arlo told me that when his father came home is was "drunk as a skunk" and he could hear his mother and father arguing late into the next morning.

I never saw Leo milk any cows or do anything other than drive back down town and do the same thing six days a week.  On Sundays he would go down to the barn and watch as his boys milked all those cows and had a bottle of wine in the place where the milk cans were stored for Monday's pickup.  I know, because Arlo and I would take a little sip now and then.

The one-room school house in the winter was heated by that big stove where stacks of split wood were placed there early in the morning.  Alma Todd would start the fire and then anyone of us boys would keep it stoked during the four hours we would be there.  I certainly enjoyed taking my sled and pushing off because I would go down that slippery road and gaining speed, would have to plow into the little driveway right up to the front steps.  Alma Todd would even catch a ride...she would sit on the back of the sled and after I pushed us off, I would jump in front of her and she would put her arms around me and down we would go, where we stopped usually was in the ditch just before the little drive way.  This didn't make me any points with her however, because at the end of third grade she gave me my report card to take home with me;  she had failed me and told my father that I couldn't see the black board.  I think she needed a certain number of students or she would have to move to town and teach there....she really didn't want to do that.

At recess we had those old swings which hung by chains and some of the boys could swing so high that they would 'bail out' from very high in the air and land and roll over...trying to impress the two girls.  I would shimmy up the long poles which held the whole thing together and reaching the top would slide all the way down again and sometimes land on my bottom real hard.  Alma would ring a little hand-held bell to bring us back inside and back to the basics of reading writing and arithmetic.

After finally passing third grade (what a waste of time) I boarded the school bus that would take me around the different houses before we finally arrived at the grade school house located up on a hill above the new high school house.  Later I will write about a young man who was the son of a professor at Cornel University, and how intelligent he was; I admired him and sat next to him every chance I could...and even said to myself once, "I bet if I study real hard, I'll be able to beat him in geography...."  I did!