Old Movies for Me!

How a man I never knew changed my life forever

When I was a little kid, Brent was my dad's best friend. Mom will tell you that Brent was Dad's best friend many years before I came along, and that he is the one who introduced them to each other. Mom will also tell you that I met Brent, but I was too little to remember.

Even though I don't remember meeting him, I know that Brent loved movies -- especially old movies. He was an aficionado. He knew why a movie was unique, or what crazy stuff had happened during shooting. He knew what actors and actresses liked each other and which ones didn't.

Brent knew that Isaac's and my education in the great classic movies was being neglected. When I was about 10, he started sending us movies that he thought we should see, that were appropriate for kids. I remember being so excited to get Brent's boxes. Isaac and I would look up all of the new movies in Dad's movie books to see what they were about. Even though I never watch VHS anymore, I still have all of the movies he sent us, because they bring back such happy memories.

I watched those videos hundreds of times over the next ten years. I can recite huge swaths of several of them. Our favorites were the "Road to..." movies, and the Marx Brothers. I still have to restrain myself from quoting them to people who will have no idea what I'm talking about. I've even gone so far as to infect my husband with my old movie love. He still swears that he doesn't like black and white movies, but he loved Harvey.

Brent is the reason that I sing Marx brothers songs. He's the reason that when all of the other little girls in my class had a crush on a member of Hansen or Leonardo Dicaprio, I had a crush on Errol Flynn. And the reason that I view the new Flight of the Phoenix movie with much skepticism. How can you replace Jimmy Stewart? All of these years later, I still don't like modern horror movies. Give me Vincent Price or Boris Karloff any day over these movies with all of their blood and gore.

Brent passed away when I was in high school. Mom tells me that we're his legacy, because he was the last of his line. He passed on his love of those movies to both me and my brother. He also passed on the knowledge that the truly great stories never get old.

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Thank you, Keely. Here's Brent  in about 1979, in the kitchen of the first apartment Dennis and I had after we were married. I can't believe it, but he appears to be washing dishes!

Brent has a starring role in many funny, happy memories of our college and newly-wed years in Warrensburg, Missouri. He had juvenile (Type 1) diabetes, and he died at the young age of 38.  G.L.N.

An Octagonal Schoolhouse in Berks County, PA

Education in the early 1800s

I wasn't looking for octagon-shaped buildings! I was trying to find some information about my Welsh grandfather who settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in the 1730s. My search brought me to a collection of papers submitted to the Berks County Historical Society in 1905-1909.

Inside that collection, "The Eight Cornered School House at Sinking Springs" caught my attention. This paper was written by Professor Eli M. Rapp, who was the superintendent of schools in Berks County.  Professor Rapp's paper included a history of the octagon-shaped, Sinking Springs schoolhouse of Berks County, and a description of the education that took place inside its walls.

I became so interested in the Sinking Springs school that I abandoned my ancestor, read the entire paper, and tried to find a photograph of the little schoolhouse. I couldn't locate one. Perhaps its three-foot-thick stone walls have finally crumbled -- or (more likely) they've been knocked down by progress.However, I did find images of other octagonal schools built in the same era and region.

Octagonal Schoolhouse, Newtown Square, PA (Wikipedia image.)

The eight-sided schoolhouse in this photo is located in Delaware County, PA. Its appearance (another view) is very similar to Professor Rapp's description of the Sinking Springs School of Berks County.  Another eight-sided schoolhouse is still standing in Bucks County, PA. All of these counties -- Berks, Bucks, and Delaware -- are neighbors in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania.

Professor Rapp wrote (in 1907) that the Sinking Springs schoolhouse was built over a century earlier (possibly in 1790-1800) and was taken out of service over 50 years earlier (possibly around 1850.) Most of the eight-sided meeting houses and schools built in eastern Pennsylvania were stone. according to Rapp.  These solid buildings, constructed after the American Revolution, were a big improvement over the rough log structures that they replaced. The webpage about the Bucks County octagonal school, says that there were once around 100 octagonal schoolhouses in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania.

Inside the schoolhouse, a cast-iron woodstove stood in the center of the room, and its stovepipe ran straight up to the cupola. Overhead, exposed rafters radiated from the center like spokes on a wheel. The teacher's desk was opposite the door, and the younger children sat around the stove. A shelf was attached to the stone walls about three feet above the floor, all the way around the room. It was used as a table by the older pupils who sat on a ring of benches, with their backs to the teacher.

In the middle of winter, 70 or even 80 children were sometimes enrolled in the school  It's hard to imagine packing that many bodies into such a small space. Only one teacher was employed each term, regardless of the enrollment.

The schoolmasters described by Professor Rapp were a rougher sort than I might have imagined. They were often itinerant, rather than permanent, community members. Most of them used tobacco, and many of them used alcohol. They maintained order through the liberal use of corporal punishment. It was not uncommon for them to get into fistfights with the older boys.*

One of the first English sentences learned by many immigrant students, according to Professor Rapp, was "Master, please mend my pen." The pens of that day were goose quills, and the schoolmasters were experts in shaping the point of a quill with a pen knife. Besides writing, the students learned reading and arithmetic. Schools like the one at Sinking Springs were the origin of the saying, "Reading, writing, and arithmetic, all to the tune of a hickory stick." Parents paid a tuition of three cents per day. I presume that fee was assessed for each child.

In his paper, Professor Rapp included a few personal observations about the state of education in 1907 . He bemoaned the decline of corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool, and he talked about schoolmarms replacing the old schoolmasters.  Read his paper in its entirety at this link: "The Eight Cornered School House at Sinking Springs."

*I told Isaac about the schoolmasters fighting with the big boys, and Isaac reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, Farmer Boy, about Almanzo's boyhood in New York. A previous schoolmaster of Almanzo's school was beaten so badly by six big boys that he died later. Almanzo feared that his new teacher, a small man, would be beaten up by the big boys, too, but the teacher was ready for the challenge. He brought out a bullwhip (that he had borrowed from Almanzo's father) and taught the bullies a lesson with it.

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Related on the Web:
List of octagonal buildings and structures in the United States 
Octagonal houses in Canada
Hyde Octagon House
Remembrances of the Yaphank School (in New York)
Gentle School Marm or Ambitious Young Men? 

 Related Prairie Bluestem posts
One Room School
Sand Tables in the 1916 Classroom
Lunch Hour at a One Room School
District 44 at Johnstown, Nebraska
Riding Horseback to School

Warp's Review Book for Arithmetic

Preparation for 8th grade exams

Tonight I came across a workbook, Using Arithmetic in Everyday Life, that I had in elementary school. The workbook dates from my 8th grade year, 1964-65.

Our teacher was getting us ready for our 8th grade exams, and she wanted to be sure we could do story problems. This arithmetic workbook has 126 pages, and except for the explanations and examples, it is entirely story problems. I'm sure I found the problems tedious to solve -- they often involved two or more steps.

This book, Using Arithmetic in Everyday Life, was published by the Warp Publishing Company of Minden, Nebraska, and copyrighted in 1942 and 1957. Everyday life in Nebraska, for many students in those years, was spent on a farm or ranch. The author acknowledges that fact with word problems like these:

Suppose your father should test his seed corn and find that 12 out of 72 grains did not sprout. What percent sprouted? If he should plant 45 acres with this seed, how many acres of this field would not have any corn on them?

Mr. White's corn yielded 50 bushels per acre. He sold one third of the corn through a commission agent who charged 3%. If corn were $1.25 per bushel, what was the agent's commission. How much did Mr. White receive?

No authors are mentioned on the workbook's title page, but when I searched for "Warp's Review Books", I saw that Harold and Ruth Warp of Minden, Nebraska, are credited for writing earlier (1929-1930) workbooks. Student workbooks were available for 17 different topics in 1931, and the Teacher's Examination Review Books covered another 20 areas of study.

The primary goal of the Warp Review Books was to prepare students for the 8th grade exams. That's why they were written, and that's why our teacher had us doing arithmetic problems in one of them.

The 8th grade exam was still a big deal in Rock County, Nebraska in 1965 when I took it. The newspaper always carried a photo of the two top-scoring students with their teachers. (This was as much an honor for the teachers as for the students!)

I tried hard on the test, but the top glory that year went to Curtis Ratliff and his teacher, whoever she was, at the Bassett Elementary School. I don't remember who had the second-highest score.  I had the third highest score, so the extra practice in the Warp's arithmetic book may have helped me. I just should have done a few  more pages!

School Photo, Second Grade

The blogger at a tender age

I was in second grade when this photo was taken. I think this was the only time that a photographer came to Duff Valley District 4 for school pictures. It's understandable that photographers didn't want to make the long drive out in the country to our little school. I don't suppose we ever had more than ten kids in all eight grades. One year, we had just five students for most of the year.

My goodness, my bangs are short in this photo! My dad had an electric hair clipper, and when he cut my brother's hair, he cut my bangs too. I remember him putting one hand on top of my head to hold me steady while he buzzed my forehead with the clipper. Then he brushed away the prickly hair clippings with a little round brush. The clipper, some attachments, the brush, and a big bib for the victim all came with the set.

Later in second grade, I got my first pair of glasses. They were sky blue with tiny rhinestones along the top, and they hurt my ears terribly. But in this photo, little Genevieve is still unspectacled. I can look directly into her eyes, and I think I see that she is a bit dubious about smiling for the camera.

Old Gymnasium in Pembroke, Kentucky

The Physical and Industrial Arts Building in Pembroke (KY) stands along Highway 41, right next to the Minit Mart on the west side of town. The inscription across the top of the building reads, "19-  Physical & Industrial Arts Building -39". I think I've taken a better picture, but I can't find it, so this one will have to do.

I've been curious about the building for a while. When I passed through Pembroke yesterday, I decided to stop and take a closer look. At the right side of the double doors, I found two plaques (pictured at left). They answered my question of whether the building was a government-funded project of the Depression. It was indeed a project of the Public Works Administration.

In the Kentucky New Era archives (viewed via Google news search), I found a little more information about the building's history. On October 14, 1938, the Pembroke superintendent of schools, Mr. L. W. Allen, said he was nearly ready for bids on the construction.  A loan and a grant, $35,000 in total, had been approved by the Federal government, and the old, frame gymnasium had already been torn down to make room for the new one.

The new facility was to contain a manual training (shop) classroom and a home economics classroom. Shop and home economics classes had not previously been offered at Pembroke. However, the biggest room in the structure would be the new gymnasium.

Pembroke's new gym will have a basketball floor measuring 48 by 80 feet, which will probably be the second largest playing space in the county. Hopkinsville has the largest playing floor but county teams have maintained for years the Tigers' gym was entirely too large. The old Pembroke gym, although the scene of several important tournaments, was too small for real offensive play and had only a limited seating capacity and no out-of-bounds arrangements.

Source: "Pembroke to Ask Bids on Project" by staff, Kentucky New Era, October 14, 1938.

The first basketball game in the new gym was scheduled for Friday, October 27, 1939. Pembroke's first and second teams played against Guthrie's first and second teams. Pat McCuiston was the coach of the Pembroke team. I did not find any information on who won the game.

A Halloween carnival was also held that night. The community was invited to come to the new facility and support their school. It was surely an exciting night for the students.

The new building was adjacent to the existing school. In September of 1940, the school building burned, but firefighters managed to save the gym. A newspaper story stated that a new building would be built so close to the gym that they would almost appear to be a single building. I am not sure whether that came to pass. There is an old, brick Pembroke School building located several blocks east of the Physical and Industrial Arts Building. The two buildings are very similar in architecture. That must surely be the new school that was built. Do you know this part of the story?

Pembroke High School was closed at the end of the 1957-1958 school year. Students from Pembroke High  and other rural high schools of the county enrolled in a new school, the newly-formed Christian County High School, in September of 1959.

Handwriting is Still Important

My opinion on the cursive writing debate

Spencerian handwriting sample from The Graphics Fairy.

This morning, I learned on Michael Leddy's blog that today is John Hancock's birthday and National Handwriting Day. I suppose that's why I thought about handwriting, as I was making a mental list this evening of some large and small changes during my lifetime. In the last half-century, I've seen schools nearly give up teaching cursive writing.

My grade-school teachers in the 1950s and 60s had nice handwriting, and they were determined that we would learn a similar longhand script. We had daily assignments to complete from our Palmer's Penmanship books, and we were graded on our efforts.

How I detested penmanship!  But the agonies of penmanship practice were worthwhile. By the time I was a young adult, I had developed a personal, legible, and fairly fast style of handwriting. Because my teachers insisted on mastery, I've never been handicapped or embarrassed by my handwriting skills or an inability to read (most) handwriting.

Today's teachers still "cover" cursive during spelling classes in second or third grade. However, the necessary practice to develop a smooth, flowing script is no longer required. Many students never give up printing. Some young adults can't read cursive handwriting. Some cannot even sign their names with connected letters. I don't blame the students. If schools no longer insist on a mastery of handwriting, most children will not choose to master the skill on their own.

Yes, times have changed. I realize that today's schools have a lot to teach. I realize that we're all typing and texting on our various electronic devices and not writing by hand as much. However, cursive handwriting remains a skill that's worthy of practice. In the adult world, neat, clear handwriting lends dignity and authority to every pen-and-paper communication. This is especially true of an attractive, distinctive handwritten signature. Consider John Hancock's famous signature. Then imagine his name, hand-printed in manuscript letters. Need I say more about the gravitas of good handwriting?

A person who cannot read and write in cursive is not as well-educated as a person who is fluent in cursive. It can't be denied. I think it's a shame -- yes, shameful -- that schools are doing such a poor job of teaching the handwritten form of the language.

Interested in improving your handwriting? Here are two good articles to read:

Op-Art: The Write Stuff
Tips for Improving Your Penmanship

James of the The Heelers Diaries recently told an interesting story about handwriting -- see #3 in his list of nuns from Planet Zorg.

The Fledgling Flies

Isaac has gone to college

Isaac moved into his college dorm last weekend. Keely and her boyfriend went over to Murray to help him haul his belongings up the stairs to his third-floor room. I had to work, so I didn't get to supervise the move -- probably just as well.

Isaac's roommate is a young man whom he knew in high school. Brandon is a sophomore and he's been at Murray State for a year already. Isaac finally got his transcript and financial aid problems straightened out, so he is officially a junior and my blood pressure is normal again.

Isaac's classes started on Wednesday. In one of them, he has already made a choice from a list of research paper topics. He says he's going to have a lot of reading, and I'm sure he's right. He couldn't register for classes until his records were in order, so this is what he was finally able to get:

• Intro to Archaeology
• Intro to Criminal Justice
• Modern Europe
• Intro to Historical Studies
• History of Latin America
  

The house has been oddly quiet all week. The laundry basket is empty and there aren't many dirty dishes. The television stays on the same channel. The collection of books on the kitchen table is half its former size. The cats know that Isaac is missing, and they are shadowing me.

Isaac's college town (Murray, KY) is just an hour and a half away, so Isaac's coming home for the weekend. He wants to get some things he forgot, do his laundry, carry on his Hopkinsville social life, etc. Dennis and I are looking forward to his visit. The cats will be happy to see him, too.

The line at the Financial Aid Office, on our last visit there.

College Bureaucracy

Plenty of room for improvement at Sparks Hall

Isaac is planning to attend Murray State University (MSU) this fall. He started the enrollment process a long time ago, but glitches have held up his progress. Now, his money is due in just two weeks, and he's still muddling through the bureaucratic maze.

One big problem is that documents we've provided did not make it to his files. Here's an example. I e-mailed the financial aid office a copy of Isaac's W-2 form on July 8. I received an e-mail back from them saying they would add it to his file.

Yesterday we drove over to Murray and went to Sparks Hall to find out why Isaac's enrollement status had not changed. They pulled his file and said his W-2 form was missing. I logged onto my e-mail from one of their computers and printed the W-2 for them. They put it in his file and said his status would be evaluated within 10 to 14 days. I said, "Can't someone evaluate it right now?!"

So the clerk led us to an office where a man looked at the file for a couple of minutes, typed a few numbers into the computer, and told us that the financial aid should be approved in two to three days. How difficult was that?

Here's another example of missing documents. We found out yesterday that Murray has not credited Isaac for his final semester at Hopkinsville Community College because they don't have his final transcript. However, when we called Hopkinsville Community College, they had proof that they sent the transcript in May. We had to hurry back to Hopkinsville and pay again to have another transcript faxed and mailed.

The unavailability of his adviser is another problem. She can't be reached by telephone, and she doesn't respond to voice mail or e-mail. Isaac is required to have a meeting with her before he can register. We're going to drive back over there tomorrow and go to her office. If he can't see her or make an appointment, we're going to ask for a different adviser.

When Isaac registers for classes and has his schedule, he can apply for academic leave from the grocery store where he works in Hopkinsville. We should also get some final figures on tuition and fees.

In a bizarre development today, I received an e-mail from the financial aid office. It was a reply to my e-mail of two weeks ago that contained the W-2 form. They had printed the W-2 and added it to Isaac's file, and they were writing to say that his status would be updated in 10 to 14 days. [Note to the financial aid office: Congratulations on your discovery of this e-mail. You couldn't find it at all, yesterday. Why didn't you just hit the "Print" button when you acknowledged the e-mail two weeks ago?]

It almost gives me a headache to write about all this, and Isaac says he's been having nightmares regularly.

One Room School

Old-fashioned education

While wandering the roads of southern Todd County (KY) a few days ago, I drove through an Amish community. I think there are probably several little schools like this in the general area. The area served by the school is limited by the distance the students can travel on bicycles, and also by the size of the building.

A schoolbell tops the building. Playground equipment, including a slide, provides recess entertainment.  The little square building in the corner of the playground is probably the outhouse. A woodshed may be somewhere out of view. I don't see a chimney on the building, but it looks like there is a stovepipe coming out of the wall beside the porch. There is no electricity.

One teacher teaches all eight grades in little schools like these. In many ways, it's very similar to the one-room school I attended in Nebraska as a child, except that we had a telephone, fuel oil heat, and electrical power.

Related posts:
Lunch Hour at a One-Room School
Three Old Schools in Christian County, Kentucky
St. Elmo School Revisited
Some Memories of Duff, Nebraska
Duff Valley
Teaching in a One-Room School

Sand Tables in the 1916 Classroom

Sand table in a rural school remembered

At Duff Valley District 4, the one-room school I attended as a child, we had a sand table. It was a sturdy, wooden box about 2 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 6 inches deep, supported by 4 legs. The outside of the table was painted a sickly shade of pale green, and the inside held about two inches of sand.

I suppose that someone's father made it for the school and filled it with clean sand from a blowout in his pasture. Sand is one thing that is plentiful in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Sometimes we played at the sand table when we spent recess inside or when we finished all our schoolwork. However, I don't remember any special toys for the sand table. By the time I was in fifth grade or so, the teacher had dumped out the sand and was using the table to store a set of Funk & Wagnall encyclopedias that my mother had donated to the school.

I had never considered the age of that sand table, but after reading about sand tables in the 1916 issues of Primary Education, I suspect it might have been a couple of generations older than me.

According to Primary Education a scene constructed in a sand table was an excellent educational device. For example, a teacher's classroom activities during the county fair included a model fair in the sand table:

The children constructed a fair in the sand-table, placing booths and a merry-go-round, and pasteboard people, horses, cows, etc. Each child also made a toy merry-go-round to take home. These were made from the given pattern during the drawing and construction periods, thus giving lessons in tracing, some measurements, cutting, coloring and construction. (Source)

How-to books for sand table scenes were offered for sale in the advertisement section of the magazines. In the articles, many sand table scenes are described:

• A zoo and a cherry orchard
• Springtime
• A millinery store
• Holland
• A Dutch sand table
• A Japanese tearoom
• Animals of Africa, an African village, and the Sahara Desert
• Farming in the rain belt vs. dry farming
• A barnyard (for use in Language, Science, and Hygiene lessons)
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The frequent mention of the sand table in this teachers' magazine suggests that it was an effective teaching and learning tool. If it seems odd or quaint, remember the times. In 1916, the students weren't jaded by electronic wonders, and teachers didn't have today's myriad of resources.

A sand table was so simple and inexpensive to make that any school could have one -- even our little country school out in the Nebraska Sandhills. However, I think our sand table was just a relic by the time I came along in the late 1950s. Our teachers were using modern technology to enhance our learning -- the phonograph, the hectograph, and the filmstrip projector!

Also in Google Books: Primary Education magazines from 1894 through 1923

Icy Roads

Schools cancelled

The recent ice storm was persistent. On three successive nights, a new layer of freezing rain fell. School was cancelled for three days in a row.

To be precise, during the last week before Christmas, school was held on Monday and school is planned for Friday (tomorrow). It will be a wild day with the kids super-excited for Christmas. I'm glad I won't be there.

"Puzzle Pages" Workbooks Remembered

Reading seatwork series illustrated by Ethel Hays

In our one-room school, our teachers taught several classes for every subject. The number of classes depended on the grade levels of the current students. Sometimes there were half a dozen grades or more for ten or twelve students.

Usually, the teacher called the classes in order from youngest to oldest. "First grade Reading," she might announce, and the first grader/s went to the bench beside the teacher's desk with appropriate books and papers. After a few minutes of oral reading, the teacher assigned some seatwork and called the next class.

In the primary grades, we always had a page or two to do in the reading workbook, a few pages of practice reading from the textbook, a page in the phonics workbook, and the next page of Puzzle Pages.

Read and write, cut and paste

Puzzle Pages was a reading seatwork series. Besides the part of every page that had to be read, the work usually required some writing and some cut-and-pasted words or pictures from the back of the book. This kept our hands busy with pencils, round-tipped scissors, and globs of white paste. We were also expected to color all the pictures on the pages.

The cover of this Puzzle Pages workbook is exactly like the ones I remember. Just look how busy those children are. And so were we! My husband remembers this workbook, also.

One day, the children in the Puzzle Pages story went to the circus, so we had pictures of circus animals to cut and paste. When the teacher checked my page, she marked the elephant wrong, even though I had pasted it in the right place. She said it was colored wrong. Not having gray in my box of 16 crayons, I had made the elephant purple. Maybe she would have preferred light black.

Ethel Hays, artist and illustrator

ThePuzzle Pages workbooks were published by McCormick-Mathers of Wichita, Kansas -- a publishing company which appears to have gone out of business. Internet searches for "McCormick-Mathers" yield used books from the 1930s through the 1980s, but no website for the company.

The illustrator of all the various Puzzle Pages editions and revised editions was Ethel Hays. Her other work included a comic strip, Flapper Fanny, during the 1920s and magazine illustrations and comic strips during the 1930s. During the 1940s, she illustrated a number of well-knownl children's books, including The Little Red Hen (1942),  Little Black Sambo (1942), The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1942), The Town and The Country Mouse (1942), and others. She also illustrated the popular Raggedy Ann books of the same era.

Thoughts About My Neighbor's Wheatfield

Bread on the stem

Do they still teach little children that bread is made from flour and that flour is made from the wheat that farmers grow? It's important that they know that farming is an honorable occupation and that farm products are vital to our nation and the world.

Food doesn't magically sprout from the grocery store shelves. If it weren't for the farmers who grow our food, we'd have to grow it ourselves. Do they tell school children that, nowadays?

The wheat in the photo above is in our Mennonite neighbor's field, across the road from our house. The tallest stalks are a full five feet. This field should make a lot of straw in addition to many bushels of grain. Well done, Willis, and thank you.

Spring Break

Florida or bust!

1920s beach scene

A surprising number of swim suits and beach towels have come through my cash register at work recently. Families are traveling to Florida over spring break and they want to be ready to swim. Many are headed for Disney World (just 677 miles from Hopkinsville), and they're also hoping to go to the beach (or at least to the pool at their hotel.)

Christian County schools had several snow days this winter, and the school board recently decided to cut spring break by three days to make up the time. The public is so outraged by the decision that the board has called a special meeting tomorrow night to reconsider. I anticipate that we will revert to the original spring break schedule and make up the snow days some other way.

People are talking about taking their kids on the scheduled vacation, even if school is in session. Some families have made complex plans for the scheduled holiday. Both parents have arranged vacation time from their jobs. Reservations have been made and tickets bought. I can understand their ire.

Ever since we moved here 17 years ago, I've heard people talk about going to Florida for spring break. Some go every year. I wonder when the trip to Florida became such a revered spring-break tradition. Surely, it didn't start until after the interstate highways were built.

This will probably make me sound old. When I was a kid going to a little country school, I don't think we ever had spring break or an Easter vacation. In high school, we may have had Good Friday off from school but I'm sure it wasn't more than that. If my family traveled at all at Easter, it would have been a trip to see my Grandma. Florida sounds a lot more exciting!

Old Children's Game: Anty Over

A nearly-lost playground game

In one-room country schools, all the students played games together at recess. The rules and rituals of the games were taught to the young by the playground elders, who had been taught in that same way when they started school.

The passing-down of traditional games from older to younger children ended when the little country schools were closed. A few games have survived, but so many have been forgotten.

For example, "Anty Over" was a game that my schoolmates and I enjoyed playing when we attended a one-room school in Nebraska, fifty years ago. I doubt if my own children have ever heard of this ritualized ball game.

[H]e rose and strolled back again past the little schoolhouse, and it was recess. Long before he reached it he heard the voices of the children shouting, "Anty, anty over, anty, anty over." They were divided into two bands, one on either side of the small building, over which they tossed the ball and shouted as they tossed it, "Anty, anty over"; and the band on the other side, warned by the cry, caught the ball on the rebound if they could, and tore around the corner of the building, trying to hit with it any luckless wight on the other side, and so claim him for their own, and thus changing sides, the merry romp went on.

Source: The Eye of Dread by Payne Erskin. Published 1913, by Little, Brown & Company, Boston.

We played the game very much like it is described above, with one minor addition. If the attempt to throw the ball over the schoolhouse was unsuccessful, we yelled, "Pig's tail!" Then, when the next throw was attempted, we yelled "Anty anty over!" again. Or sometimes, "Anty eye over!" which was our way of saying it fancy.

After the ball went over the schoolhouse, a few moments of high suspense followed. We didn't know if the other team had caught the ball or not. If they hadn't caught it, they would call "Anty over!" pretty soon and throw the ball back. But if they had caught the ball, they were going to run around the schoolhouse and try to tag us.

When the other team came around, they usually split up and came from both sides of the schoolhouse at the same time. Because we didn't know who had the ball, we didn't know which way to dodge! The only escape was to run wildly around the schoolhouse to the side the other team had just vacated.

Our teachers always warned us to be careful of the schoolhouse windows, and I don't remember that we ever broke any of them, though we certainly rattled the window screens a few times with our badly thrown balls.

In Dialect Notes, published by the American Dialect Society in 1895, alternate names listed for Anty Over included Anty-anty-over, Antny-over, Anthony-over, Baily-over, Colly-over and Colly-up.

Education Problems in Christian County

My thoughts on the topic aren't brilliant.

Christian County, KY, is in the middle of an education crisis that's been coming for years. Finally, public outrage has been ignited.

The radical and innovative Kentucky Education Reform Act was implemented in the early 1990s, about the time my daughter started first grade. Since then, a tremendous amount of time and effort has been dedicated to creating student writing portfolios, as required by law. However, no education miracles have happened in this county.

In fact, the opposite has been true. We're graduating illiterate high school seniors who aren't prepared for the work world. Our schools' test scores are low by both state and national standards. We've even become one of Kentucky's worst school districts.

According to statewide test scores for the 2006-07 school year, Christian County Public Schools ranks 164th out of 175 Kentucky school districts.

The entire community should endeavor to change that, [Hopkinsville Mayor Dan] Kemp said.

“Having an educated workforce is the main key to a successful economy and a higher quality of life,” Kemp said.

The mayor coordinated the first Community Education Summit with Superintendent Dr. Bob Lovingood, the Hopkinsville-Christian County Chamber of Commerce and Hopkinsville Community College President Dr. Jim Selbe. HCC will host the summit.

Source: "Education event seeks unification", by Joe Parrino, Staff Writer, Kentucky New Era, January 5, 2008

The mayor's summit was held last weekend. Community agencies and officials, state education officials, representatives from successful school districts in the region, and our own school administrators and board members met with interested members of the public. Speeches were made and workshops were held.

Now the good folks on the Hoptown Hall forum are hashing it over. Most of them seem to be concerned that the Christian County schools aren't challenging their bright kids to excel.

I know that problem exists. Certainly, my kids weren't challenged to excel by many of their teachers (though they both had a few great teachers.) Still, though my kids came through the worst schools in a county of substandard schools, they did very well on their ACTs when they were high school seniors.

How can this be? Well, I believe it happened because we made reading a part of their lives from infancy. They wanted to read for themselves, and they were thrilled when they could! They were thoroughly convinced that books were wonderful. They quickly became hungry readers, and to a large extent, they educated themselves. In addition, we expected them to behave themselves and do well at school.

I think it's nice for bright students to get special attention at school, but I just can't get myself agitated about it being one of the worst problems with education in Christian County. It seems to me that we ought to get agitated about young adults who graduate from high school but can't read.

But even if we try to do a better job of teaching reading, there are so many social factors that affect how well our students learn at school. In Christian County, many of our children come from homes where drug abuse is a problem. We have a lot of low-income families. Many of them don't have two parents in the home.

Perhaps the worst problem we face is that many parents have an apathetic or even an antagonistic attitude toward the schools. Negative parent attitudes contribute to all sorts of discipline problems.

Most of the social problems aren't going to be changed by holding public meetings about local education, but maybe at least the public attitude toward the schools will become a little more cooperative. I hope so.

My Accents and Dialects

Language with a personal flavor

In my opinion, I don't have much of an accent when I speak my native tongue-- but I suppose that most people don't hear their own accents very well.

I am thankful that my grade-school teachers (in a tiny, one-room country school in Nebraska) taught me standard English and proper grammar. They had a fit if anyone said "ain't," and I still don't say it four decades later. Saying things like "I seen" or "I done" was not permitted either. Those ladies did not hesitate to correct a student's grammar whenever necessary, and I am glad they taught me well.

After living in Missouri and Kentucky for 20 years or more of my adult life, I've added "y'all" ("you all") to my vocabulary. This makes my Nebraska friends say that I've picked up a southern accent. However, native-born Kentuckians say to me, "You're not from here, are you?"

Various dialects can be heard in Christian County. One characteristic of our local speech is that people talk slowly. My speech has slowed down too, and that's another reason that people say I've developed a Southern drawl.

Two words that I know I pronounce wrong are "wash" and "milk." I say "wush" (rhymes with "mush") and "melk" (rhymes with "elk".) I think that's a bit of flat Midwestern accent that I retain from my childhood.

My aunt, a native of Gordon, NE, who now lives near Chicago, told me that she can hear her Midwestern accent when she says "potatoes." She actually says "podadoes"  because of the place in her mouth that her tongue touches when she pronounces the "t."

  Plowing a potato field near Andersonville, TN, 1933

St. Elmo School Revisited

A local couple is compiling information about the St. Elmo School in southeastern Christian County, KY

An early photo of the
St. Elmo School in Christian County, KY

I had a nice note recently from Charles and Dean Norfleet, who grew up in the St. Elmo community of southeastern Christian County, KY. The Norfleets happened to find a post about three old Christian County schools (St. Elmo, Fairview, and Ralston) that I had made a few months ago. Charles wrote the following in an e-mail:

As one who went to the St. Elmo School, I appreciate your interest in it. My wife and I both attended there. I left in 1948 to attend Pembroke and she was among the last group of students to attend there in 1949. I am 70 years old. There are a few people in Christian County still alive who went there earlier than I did (1943).

The building is still being used as a Homemakers Club meeting place. My wife is a current member of the club. They are searching for advice/procedures to have this building placed on the Kentucky Historical Register. If you have any ideas please share them.

This Club has been hosting a BBQ every year for over 55 years. You should attend. 500+ Christian Countians look forward to the 2nd Thursday in July when they come out to the old school for a great outdoor BBQ. Please find attached a very early picture of St. Elmo Elementary School.

If you have information about the school or experience with the Kentucky Historical Register, please get in touch with the Norfleets. They are documenting the school's history from old school rosters, people's memories, etc. You can write to me at prairiebluestem at gmail.com, and I will gladly forward your e-mail to Charles and Dean.

As you can see from the photo at right, which I took earlier this year, the building appears to be very well preserved in its historic condition.

Charles also sent a link to "The Pembroke Connection", a great website that you'll enjoy even if you're not from this part of Kentucky. The site is mainly about the Pembroke school -- that is, the Pembroke school along Highway 41, not the new Pembroke school on Highway 115 south of town. The old photos are a trip back in time.

Related post: Three Old Schools in Christian County, KY

Technorati tags: St. Elmo School, Pembroke Kentucky

"Back to School" in 1980

The first two weeks of teaching in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

In mid-July of 1980, Dennis and I arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We had accepted a two-year teaching contract at the Santa Cruz Cooperative School (SCCS).

Just a couple of days after we arrived, Bolivia had a military coup. We sat it out at the school director's house, with several other newly-arrived teachers who didn't have apartments yet.

In a couple more days, the markets and shops reopened, and everyone came out of their houses and went back to work. The new government established checkpoints on the main roads, military patrols of the streets, new papers for foreigners to carry, and a midnight curfew for one and all.

For us newcomers to the country, these restrictions were just part of the overall strangeness. We settled into our little apartment and got ready to teach school.

The seasons are reversed south of the equator, so it was winter when we arrived in July. The school year at SCCS ran from August through May. This put the seniors on the right schedule to go to college in the U.S., and also worked well for hiring teachers from the U.S. It also put us in school through the hottest months of tropical summer!

Instruction at SCCS was in English, but its students came from everywhere. Some were the children of rich Bolivians. Others were the children of foreigners working in Santa Cruz -- Americans, British, French, Israelis, Taiwanese, Koreans, Germans, Swedes, etc.

Many of the foreign families in SCCS were connected with sugar plantations and refineries or gas drilling and pipelines. Some families were in Santa Cruz with U.N. programs, as representatives of their home countries, missionaries, entrepreneurs, or expert advisors in some field.

When I look at the SCCS website, I am astonished at the growth and apparent prosperity of the school. When we taught there, the school didn't have as many buildings as it does today.

Here's an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my family on September 1, 1980:

School has started and it has kept us busy and mentally, if not physically, exhausted. We have two weeks under our belts now. We had a week of orientation and then students on Monday the 18th.

I think this has been the most difficult two weeks of school teaching I have ever done. The kids came in absolutely wild, and it has taken stern measures to keep them quiet and in their desks long enough to attempt to teach anything. Also, of my 18 kids, only one speaks English at home, so I explain and show, and re-explain and show again, endlessly. In Reading class, I teach not just the recognition of the word, but also the meaning. The language barrier makes everything about twice as hard as it would ordinarily be.

They are starting to shape up a bit as far as keeping quiet. We have very high ceilings and a brick tile floor, so any chair scraping or whispering echoes badly! If one other person is making noise, it is hard to hear whoever should be talking. So I'm sure my second graders think Mrs. Netz is really a grouch about being quiet.

However, I am learning the vocabulary that they can understand and adjusting to them somewhat--as they are to me. It is frustrating much of the time, but still it's rewarding when someone does understand.

I have 7 girls and 11 boys in my room. Dennis has 22 in his room. He has been having the same language problems as me, though to a lesser degree because his are 4th graders and have had more years of speaking English. With all this and the stress of being a first-year teacher, I'm sure he will always vividly remember these next months.

Related information:
Welcome to Santa Cruz
Free Wisdom about Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Michael Simon's photo blog about travel in South America

Technorati tags: Santa Cruz Bolivia, Santa Cruz Cooperative School, SCCS, 1980

Summer Days

Plenty of time for play

Collagemama wrote today about the summers of her childhood in which she had plenty of unstructured time to contemplate the marvels of nature. She wonders how much time today's children have for such things.

I remember the long summer vacations we had when I was little. We had three full months of freedom from school. Most days, my mother had some chores for me, but after the dishes were done, I had long afternoons to do whatever interested me. My schedule was open to...

• Play house with my sister
• Look for wild mushrooms after a rain
• Feed bread crumbs to the ants
• Help the mama cat take care of her kittens
• Read a book from cover to cover
  
• Collect snails from the windmill tank in a jar
• Fish with a cane pole from the Skull Creek bridge
  
• Make a comfy nest in the haymow

And if I got tired of doing those things, I could...

• Wade in the windmill pond
• Ride the ornery little pony
  
• Search for 4-leaf clovers
  
• Find Indian turnips in the pasture
• Visit the hayfield to watch the haystacks being made
• Count the ladybugs on the lawn
• Stir up some mud pies and weed-seed coffee
• Eat green beans right off the vine in the garden

Educators are worried nowadays that the kids will forget too much during a long summer vacation. Here in our county, there's been talk of year-round school with a couple weeks off at the end of each quarter. After public protest, that idea was officially dropped, but for about five years now, school has started early in August. It's not year-round school, but summer vacation is greatly shortened.

In addition, many children spend their days at daycare centers or summer camps. They may also have a busy schedule of lessons, practices, and competitions or games. When they do get home, many electronic amusements are available. Certainly, all of this reduces the time that children spend creating their own simple ways to have fun.

Technorati tags: growing up in the country, summer vacation, country childhood, unstructured play