Tag: school

Waiting For the Bus in a Snow Cave

Brenda Stratton

High winds, bitter cold, and swirling snow greeted us that morning as we stepped out the back door and began the walk to the bus stop at the end of our long driveway.

It was clear the walk was going to be rough. The high winds made it hard to keep our footing. 

We could tell there was a lot of snow in the driveway from the house. But our house and Nellie’s were side by side, so it wasn’t until we rounded her house that we got the full effect of it. 

The driveway was bordered on either side by wire farm fencing. It was full of snow to the tops of the fence posts, captured there by the fences themselves. 

The snow depth was almost as high as I was tall at eight years old.

In sharp contrast, the fields on either side of  the lane were windswept. 

To get to the bus stop, we had to climb up on top of the snow which, thankfully, had an icy crust strong enough to support us without breaking through.  

We could hear the wind as it skittered snow in waves across the frozen fields and the empty ribbon of highway. 

We were FREEZING by the time we got to the bus stop, the wind in our faces all the way, tiny stinging projectiles of snow assaulting every bit of our exposed skin. 

That’s when we noticed the storm had formed a snow cave in the ditch by the highway. 

The cave was big enough for us to fit inside if we crouched down. 

We ducked inside it and realized that it blocked most of the wind. It didn’t make it any warmer, but it was a relief to get out of the wind. 

Monty was a foot taller than me. He was able to see over the  tops of the drifts, so he positioned himself by the mouth of the cave so he could pop his head out occasionally and see if the bus was coming. 

Missing the bus meant missing a day of school. And neither of us wanted to try to explain that to Mom. 

After waiting about 15 minutes, the bus finally came. 

I have sometimes wondered what the bus driver thought when he saw two children suddenly pop up out of the ditch as he approached. He wouldn’t have been able to see the snow cave because the opening was facing away from the road. 

We scrambled onto the bus and were relieved to finally be inside where it was warm and out of the weather.  

On returning from school that afternoon, the wind had calmed down some, but we still had that long walk home. 

This time, we thought it might be easier walking through the field, so we jumped over the fence and walked home through the field. 

Since there was no gate on the side of the field where it bordered our house, we had to climb the wire fence when we got home. That wasn’t easy to do with frozen hands and bulky snow boots. 

The drive remained blocked for several days, so we had to repeat that walk to and from the bus daily. 

It was hard for Dad, too. Since the driveway was blocked, he had to park the car by the highway and walk home. It might have been harder for him, though, because he had to walk to the car and home again in the dark.

After Mr. Parkinson, the farmer who farmed the ground for Nellie, dug his own long drive out, he finally was able to clear our driveway. 

Many years have passed since then, and I have lived through a lot of harsh Illinois winters. But I have never seen another driveway fill completely to the tops of the fence posts or form a crust so hard we could walk on it without breaking through.

And I have certainly never waited for a school bus in a snow cave again.

My Teacher Saved My Life

Brenda Stratton

I was seven years old when I asked my teacher about the mole on her arm.

She had dark hair and fair skin, like me. I had freckles—lots of them—and I was curious. Children are not subtle. If we notice something, we ask about it.

Instead of brushing off my question, she answered gently.

She told me that because I had so many freckles, I should keep an eye on them. She pointed to one on my upper arm in particular and said I should watch it in case it ever wanted to be something else.

She didn’t frighten me.

She didn’t lecture me.

She simply planted a seed of awareness.

And I listened.

For two days, I tried to remember her name.

Then I said her first name out loud—Mary Jane—and “Clawson” came back immediately. I have always liked her name.

Thirty years later, I remembered.

I was thirty-eight years old when that freckle on my upper arm began to change. It developed tiny flecks of blue that hadn’t been there before. It didn’t look dramatic. It didn’t hurt. But it didn’t look the same anymore.

Because of what she had told me when I was seven, I had watched it over the years. Not obsessively. Just attentively.

Around that same time, my youngest son didn’t want to go to school one morning. He said he felt sick. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him, but I took him to the doctor that day.

By the time we were in the exam room, he seemed fine. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong. Since we were already there, I asked him to look at the freckle on my arm.

He examined it once—just once—and scheduled me for surgery.

It was malignant melanoma.

Scott was eight at the time. The other kids were teenagers, but they still needed their mother.

So I did what needed to be done.

The surgeon removed the melanoma along with a generous margin of surrounding tissue. I carry the scar on my upper left arm to this day, and another on my leg from the skin graft that closed the wound.

I was seven when Mary Jane Clawson told me to watch that freckle.

I was thirty-eight when I remembered.

She never knew what her quiet advice would mean to me.

But I did.

And I am still here.

Listening to the Little Kids Read

Brenda Stratton

When I was in second grade, Mrs. Clawson asked me to help the younger children learn to read.

She gave me a copy of the reader they were using and told me which story they were working on. Since it was the same reader I had used the year before, I already knew the stories.

The desks were lined up in neat rows, all facing the blackboard.

I would pull a little chair up beside a student’s desk and listen while they read out loud. When a child came to a word they didn’t know, I encouraged them to sound it out. If that didn’t help, I would tell them the word.

There was something satisfying, even at the age of seven, about being able to help.

I really enjoyed it — and I was proud that Mrs. Clawson trusted me to do it.

Of course, I had my own work to do, but if I finished early and she needed someone to listen to the first graders read, she would ask if I would like to help. I always did.

The next year, when I started third grade, I moved to a different classroom. Even then, there were times when Mrs. Clawson asked my new teacher, Miss Nesbitt, if I could come back and listen to her students read.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I suppose that was my first experience as a tutor.

Mom vs the School Superintendent

Brenda Stratton

The superintendent said, “No.”

Mom said, “Want to bet?”

In the 1950s, our school district, like so many others, had a strict dress code. Girls were required to wear dresses to school. No exceptions.

I liked wearing dresses, so that was fine — at least until winter came.

The school bus would not drive down our long driveway, so Monty and I had to walk out to the highway and wait for it to pick us up.

We had to make sure we got there first. If we missed the bus, we missed a day of school. We had only one car, and Dad took it to work.

Sometimes the wait stretched to fifteen or twenty minutes if the roads were icy or snowy and the bus was delayed.

In the worst part of winter, there was often severe cold and deep snow. One time, the wind was so fierce that Monty and I ducked into a snow cave that had formed along the drift just to get out of the wind.

Another time, the snow completely filled our driveway to the tops of the fence posts. Then a thick crust formed on top, and we had to walk across it to reach the highway.

I had several pairs of corduroy slacks, so Mom started putting them on me under my dress, with instructions to take them off and leave them with my coat and boots when I got to school.

The first day I wore them, Mrs. Clawson quietly and gently told me it was against the rules and that I shouldn’t do it again.

I told Mom when I got home that afternoon.

She didn’t say much to me about it, but she called the district superintendent. She explained that I would continue wearing slacks to school, but that I would remove them once I arrived in order to comply with school rules.

He didn’t like that at all.

He told her that once I stepped onto the school bus, school rules applied — and that I had to follow them.

Mom didn’t think so.

She explained about our walk to the highway, the long waits in the cold, and the winter weather. Then she told him that I would continue wearing slacks to school — whether he liked it or not.

I’m sure he didn’t like it.

But no one ever told me I couldn’t wear them again.

I continued wearing them until the weather warmed up, and I kept doing so as long as we lived there.

Mom didn’t brook any nonsense when it came to her kids. She didn’t start fights, but she always finished them.

Frew School

Brenda Stratton

I remember the day Mom registered me for school clearly.

I stood behind her while she talked with my teacher, Mrs. Clawson. After Mom left, Mrs. Clawson showed me into the classroom and gave me an empty desk.

The school had three classrooms and six grades, so there were two grades in each one. Mrs. Clawson taught first and second grade. Miss Nesbitt taught third and fourth grades. Mrs. Dahl taught fifth and sixth grades. Each classroom had its own area for us to hang our coats and store our boots.

The classrooms were all lined up in a row on the east side of the building. My classroom was the first one inside the front door, then the middle grades, and finally the upper grades.

The other side of the building housed the bathrooms, the lunchroom, and the kitchen.

Sometimes the tables and chairs would be folded up, giving us an open space for activities. I especially remember the times when the record player came out. Mrs. Johnston visited once a week to teach music, and I think that may have been when we learned the bunny hop. I can still picture us hopping around the room in a circle with our hands on each other’s shoulders as the music played.

I settled quickly into the new school. I liked my teacher and the other kids. There were swings on the playground, and I especially liked playing hopscotch on the cement entrance to the school with the other girls during recess.

Dad found a new job right away. He said he was a Fuller Brush Man. I didn’t know what he did at first. He said he went door-to-door selling things. He showed me the case he carried with him and all the things inside it. Some of them were pretty interesting.

We lived down a long driveway. Across the highway was another long driveway with a farm at the end. That is where my friend JoAnn lived.

We stayed there longer than we had in Galva, and before long it felt like home.

Moving Again: From Galva to Aledo

Brenda Stratton

We stayed in Galva through Christmas of 1958. I remember the colored lights, and Mom letting me help put tinsel on the tree for the first time.

I turned seven a month later. Soon after that, it was time to move again.

I liked living in Galva a lot. It was different from the farm in a lot of ways.

City streets instead of gravel roads.

Walking to school. I loved school — especially learning to read. 

I had school friends to play with. Some lived close enough that I could walk to their houses after school.

Dad sold his milk trucks, and soon we were on our way. 

 We moved west again, this time just east of Aledo along Illinois Route 17. 

Our new home sat halfway between our old farm near Viola and where Mom had grown up, northwest of Aledo in Millersburg.

It is the same general area I had always lived in, except for the nine months or so we lived in Galva.

As much as I liked living in town, I was also glad to be back on the farm, even if it wasn’t the same farm. This time, Dad wasn’t farming. We moved into a tenant house next door to Nellie Briggs, the lady who owned the farm. Someone else farmed the land for her. 

Our little tenant house was much smaller than the stately white main house, but it was cute and very well kept. It had only two bedrooms, but we made it work with our bunk beds.

There was one thing about this house that worried me, though. The heat came from pipes in the walls, which I wasn’t used to. I thought the heat meant it could catch on fire, but Mom assured me it was safe. She said the house was heated by a system of water pipes in the walls. It was warmed by the coal furnace in the basement.

Just in case, though, I always had a backup plan — in case we ever did have a fire. I would smash the window next to my bed with Jocko, my teddy bear.

Fortunately, that plan was never needed. 

Not long after we moved into the tenant house near Aledo, Mom took me to register at Frew School.

Nap Rugs and Sugar Plum Fairies

Brenda Stratton

Whenever I hear “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” I am six years old again, lying on a nap rug in my first grade classroom—warm and safe.

Kindergarten wasn’t required back then, so first grade was my first real taste of school—and I loved it.

After lunch, my teacher — Mrs. Quanstrom — told us to get out our nap rugs and lie down. She turned off the lights, but the room never got completely dark. The tall classroom windows still let in the afternoon light, filtered through the oak trees that lined that side of the school.

After turning off the lights, she put a record on the classroom player. I don’t remember all of the songs she played, but “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” was my favorite.

The room was very quiet except for the music. We could take a nap if we wanted to, but I was always too interested in listening.

The rug beneath me was soft. Mom knew why the teacher asked us to bring one, so she chose a rug she knew would be comfortable to lie on.

I don’t remember ever falling asleep. I was too busy listening—to the music, to the quiet, to the feeling of being exactly where I belonged.

I didn’t always keep my eyes closed, but I did most of the time. And when “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” played, I could see them in my imagination.

The fairies were small and light, and they danced and twirled in the air above me.

Even now, when I hear that music, I am six years old again, lying on that soft rug in a classroom washed in afternoon light.

I am still lying on that rug.

And I can still see the fairies.

No, I never did fall asleep during nap time.

I was already dreaming.

First Grade

Brenda Stratton

Around the time I first started school, I went shopping with Mom, Dad, and Monty for school supplies. I was so excited! I remembered the years when my brother went to school and I had to stay behind. Now I would never be left behind again.

When we got to the store, it was decided that Dad would help me pick out my supplies while Mom helped Monty. When everything had been chosen, Dad paid for the supplies. He was still carrying my tablet under his arm.

We left the store and had only gone a few feet when I heard him say, “Oh, no! I forgot to pay for the tablet.”

Without another word, he turned around and went back into the store — still clutching it to his chest — and apologized to the clerk for the mistake.

The only real experience I had with school before starting myself was the day I went with my brother — a memory I’ve written about before.

I can’t remember the exact first day of school. What I do remember is the school and the classroom itself.

The school was a tall, square building made of dark brick. It stood exactly one block from home. I couldn’t guess what school would be like, but I was anxious to find out.

I remember the inside of my classroom — from the wall of windows where the light filtered through the oak trees outside, to the crayon color chart on the wall with the names of each color printed in bold lettering. I remember my cubby, too. We each had one with our name printed on it to keep our nap rugs in.

We would move again before the end of the school year, but this is where I met Dick and Jane, Baby Sally and their pets, Spot and Puff. It is also where I learned that colors had names that I could write and someone else could read — and that classical music could make a child sit still and listen… and imagine.

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Brenda Stratton

Two years after we left the farm — in the spring of my third-grade year — we moved back to Mom’s childhood home in the little village of Millersburg, where so much of our family history already lived. 

It had been a tumultuous year for me. We moved often, and I was about to enter my fourth school in as many months — the fifth since starting first grade.

The new school — the little red schoolhouse that I became so fond of — was just two blocks from home. I would be able to walk or ride my bike back and forth.

Color rendering of the Millersburg School re-created from a historic newspaper photo.

The school itself — and many of the kids who lived there — were already familiar to me. My Aunt Evelyn — Mom’s sister — lived across the street. When I visited, she often put me in touch with the neighborhood kids, so I already had playmates when we moved there.

The school was made of red brick. It was two stories tall with a bell tower on top, though the bell had been removed before I ever walked through its doors. 

There were only two classrooms — one for grades one through three and one for grades four through six. Both classrooms were on the ground floor. 

Each classroom had only one teacher. Miss Garner was mine. The teacher for the bigger kids was Mrs. Brayton. 

Upstairs was a large room where we all ate lunch and had our music lessons. We did other things there, too, like school Christmas celebrations and sometimes a class play. 

Next to it was the kitchen and the tiny library. Sometimes when I went upstairs to get a library book, I’d stop in next door to say hello to Mrs. Archer, the cook. 

When that Monday came, and Mom brought me to school for the first time, I wasn’t nervous like I was at those other schools. I knew the streets. I knew the kids. It felt like home. 

Moving from the Farm Into Town

Brenda Stratton

In early summer of 1958, after school was out for Monty, we moved from our farm in Wanlock, just outside Viola, Illinois, to Galva — about 30 miles east — where my world expanded in ways I couldn’t yet begin to imagine. Life would never be quite the same. 

There were so many “firsts.” For the first time in my six years of life: 

– The wide open spaces of the farm were replaced by  houses that were built closer together with a state highway outside our front door that I was forbidden to cross. 

– We had indoor plumbing! I was fascinated by the bathtub, which Mom let me play in sometimes. That meant no more baths at the kitchen sink, and no more trips to the outhouse when it was raining or in the cold of winter. 

– I was finally old enough to start school that next fall.  I had been begging for this for a couple of years, and now my fondest wish was granted. It would impact my life in ways I could not have foreseen, and set me on a journey of learning that continues to this day. 

– I lost my best friend and constant companion —  Brownie, our farm dog. City ordinances said he had to be tied. He was clearly unhappy, so he went to live on another farm with new children to play with. 

– Monty and I had a little more freedom. The town was small, but it had a candy store in the center of town. We were occasionally allowed to walk there to spend our nickels and dimes. There was also a concrete wading pool nearby which was open to the public — but couldn’t have been more than a foot deep. I had to sit or lie down to get wet all over.

– I made new friends. Susie lived a short distance away. The Mohnen twins (both boys) lived across the street. The lady who lived opposite us on the other side of the state highway liked to hold me on her lap, but I could only go see her if Mom was with me. 

I missed the farm, but there were so many new experiences that I also enjoyed so I adjusted quickly. 

The move into town was only the beginning of a lifetime of learning and growth. 

I would never visit the farm again except for two or three times as an adult when we were in the area, a nod to the nostalgia of my childhood. But sadness in losing it never truly came, because it is deeply embedded in my memory and lives on in my stories. That is why I write them — to remember, and for them to live on in the lives of my children and grandchildren and all who come after. It is also to leave behind a small bit of history —  to tell what life was like on a northwestern Illinois farm in the 1950s.