Country school days

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Do you remember the days when you walked two miles uphill to school through a foot of snow - and two miles back home again?

Members of the Emmet County Historical Society, Inc., Thursday night at the Estherville VFW Canteen recalled those days in their 45th annual meeting. With the theme, rural country schools, there were plenty of memories to go around.

President Dave Kaltved showed a drawing of a 28-by-20 schoolhouse in 12-Mile Lake Township. The plans even included the number of windows in the building.

Kaltved recalled how the country school opened when his family first moved to the area - and then closed when they moved away. He also remembered riding ponies to school. High Lake District No. 10 had nine students then, in the early 1950s.

After attending country school, Kaltved went to school in Swea City where he went from a class of three to 30. It was easy to tell which school Kaltved preferred.

Others present remembered their own school days as well.

Don Krough remembered going to country school close to the Minnesota line. In fact, some Minnesota students attended.

"We walked all the time. We never had a ride to school," recalled Viola West.

Kaltved remembered using a lard bucket for a lunch bucket - a far cry from the lunch buckets of today, of course.

Roy Moritz, who went to Emmet Consolidated three miles north of Estherville, remembered the school had a high school even until 1946 or 1947.

Years ago, when there was a shortage of teachers, all that was required was an eighth-grade education to teach school, said Mildred Bryan. That sometimes presented difficulties when a male student might be as old as 20. "They were really glad when the big boy didn't go to school," Bryan said.

Lorraine Koons went to school in Eagle Township in Kossuth County. In her eighth grade the school closed and, like Kaltved, she too went to Swea City.

Milly Maloney went to two different country schools. When school started their horse went home, and like clockwork, came back to get them when school was out. In winter, though, their father came to get them in a bobsled.

Life was hard then. Kaltved remembered the old country schools were built of lathe and plaster with no insulation. And West remembers bringing in cobs and wood for the stove. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they had coal. And if it wasn't warm enough, the students were dressed for it with long underwear, long socks and snow pants, West said. It was the days before REA, so the teacher would light kerosene lamps as winter clouds covered the sun.

Mildred Bryan remembers how schools were built so light would come over the students' shoulders when they sat at their desks.

One of the big advantages of country schooling was repetition. With several grades in one room, by the eighth grade a student would have already heard the lessons several times. It also helped when they tutored younger students, further reinforcing what they had learned.

It was no wonder, then, that those who attended country schools did at least as well - and often better - than their counterparts in town.

Similar issues faced country schools then as now, though - the cost of teachers, improved transportation and mechanization of farming were efficiencies that also indirectly led to the decline of country schools.

Today, a few still remain - relics and remnants of Iowa's rural past that still hold a place in the hearts of those who stuck pigtails in inkwells and wrote on the blackboard how sorry they were about it.