SCHOOL DAYS STORY – SELECT, OHIO CO. KY
Part of Oral History Interview
With my Grandmother, Eva (Smith) Cox
1889 - 1988
November 7, 1976 audio tape
Oral histories are
stories that living individuals tell about their past, or about the past of
other people. It was not until the late
1960's when I had become hooked on genealogy that I realized how important it
was to preserve oral history with my family members. It finally dawned on me that all the old
family stories being told around my grandmother’s dining table were a critical
first phase of genealogical research and data preservation, and so I bought a
tape recorder and always took it to my grandmother’s house and to my parents when
I visited them.
~.~
In my grandmother’s day, children attended school in between
helping make crops on the farm – sometimes going only three or four months at a
time. Grandmother attended Bunker Hill
school – a one room framed school house where several grades were taught. At some point, both she and my grandfather
attended a school at Select.
Most of the time the Smith children walked to school about
two miles from their home. Sometimes
when the weather was rainy and cold, they went in the buggy, or else stayed at
home. Once in a while her brothers rode
their horse. They carried sandwiches for
lunch in syrup buckets most of the time.
School usually started about eight o’clock and lasted
until about four o’clock. Every morning
after the teacher rang the school bell, the day began with the Pledge of
Allegiance, as the students stood beside their desks facing the flag and
reciting. Lessons included
reading, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, penmanship and geography.
When my grandmother first started to school, the first step
was to learn the alphabet. Spelling and
reading came next. Then they learned to
print – writing came later. Number work
came soon and it was a terrifying experience to have to stand up at the
blackboard to do a sum before all those watching eyes.
Teachers often boarded in homes of residents near the
school.
Grandmother remembered that she was punished once because
she had her feet out in the aisle and the teacher told her to put her feet
under her desk and keep them there. When
she forgot, Mr. Birch Shields, her teacher at the time, made her stand up and
hold out her hand, whereupon he applied a wooden ruler to the palm of her
hand. It really embarrassed her. There were strict rules of behavior in the
classroom and punishment for infringement thereof.
~.~
One day while some of
the family was sitting around my grandmother’s dining table, discussing old
times in Ohio County, Kentucky, my aunt, asked my grandmother to tell us about
her school days and teachers, and she told the following little stories: “Oh, tell us about
your school days at Select and the story about Aunt Ella.”
Grandmother: “Oh, my goodness, I don’t want to go into
that. Oh, they had teachers down there
and everyone they got – the kids were so mean they ran them off. And they finally got one teacher – his name
was Mr. Floyd. He was tall and had coal-black
hair, and dark eyes, and teeth about that long. (Measuring, laughing.) And I’m telling you, when he got there, he
told them that he had come to teach that school and they were going to mind
him, and he meant it. And it was grown
girls and boys at that day and age. And
he give orders. And that little clock set
up on that table, and you could hear that clock tick all the time. And that man could make noise…I’m telling
you! That man would pop his teeth and
you’d think he was going to break them. (Laughing.) Oh, he was strict. But he went on…he came back and finished that
school out; he came back and taught another school. And us kids then were just about grown.
“In that day and time, they had platforms, and the
blackboard was across the front of the room, and it had two long benches, on
this side and on that side. And you had
to stand up to read. Or, if it was
arithmetic, you had to go to the blackboard.
Well, Ella was reading, and Ella couldn’t read too good, I reckon…she
couldn’t pronounce her words too good, and the teacher got to mocking her. She just dropped that book and she just
looked at him. He told her to go on
reading. Ella just looked at him, and
she said, “I’ll read when you quit
mocking me.”
“And he had a cane and he would always pop it real loud on
that bench. And she was standing right
up to him, too. And Mr. Shields – that
was your Aunt Evelyn’s husband, he was a teacher and he just happened to be
there visiting. And he got up and….he
always loved Ella…always thought a lot of her when she was his size…and he told
her, “You can read – go on.” And he talked to her and got her to go
on. But Ella wasn’t going to do it. And Mr. Floyd (or maybe she said Mr. Lloyd) told her, “Go on and read like I told you to.”
And she would start and he would start mocking her. And she just dropped that book. But Mr. Birch Shields smoothed things over
and she read. (Ella was two years younger than my grandmother.)
“Then one time I got into it for putting my foot in the
aisle. And he told me not to, but I
forgot and did it again. And he came
over across my legs like that with his cane.
I thought I was killed. (Laughing.) I never put my feet out like that again. He told me to keep them under my desk, but I
just forgot; I didn’t do it on purpose.
I was studying my lesson, and “whack,” he taken me.
“Now Mr. Shields, he was a good teacher. But when he got the headache, you’d better
look out. He was strict.”
“Tell us which teacher it was who made
Granddaddy march around that stove at school.”
Grandmother: “I’m not for sure, but it seems to me like it
was Birch Shields.”
“And why did he make him march around it? Because he had done something?”
Grandmother: “I don’t remember that.”
(My dad took up the
story): “He put a little coal in the
stove, just to be moving around and getting up…to get attention. But it didn’t need any. And the teacher told him if he was cold, to
sit down by the stove. And so he sat
down by the stove. And of course it got
hot. So the teacher told him, “Put a little more coal in the stove. And just march around the stove.” And then he told him to put a little more
coal in. And of course the stove got
hotter and hotter. And Daddy said in a
little while, that stove was red hot.
And he would let him make about two rounds and tell him to put a little
more in. And keep marching. It taught him a lesson.”
~.~
Tell about the
fascinators you wore to school.
Grandmother: “Oh, yes, in that time, they called them a
fascinator. They were pink and blue and
white. You could buy any color you
wanted, and put them over your head and tied them under each end and keep you
warm. And they were pretty, too. The rest of the year, the girls all wore
bonnets. We had pretty percale bonnets
that mother made. Red, blue and
different colors. Mother made our
dresses and slips. She had a sewing
machine and loved to sew. We bought our
shoes at Beaver Dam – went to town in a wagon. “
Now tell about Auntie
fighting at Bunker Hill when you started home from school. (Auntie” was my grandmother’s older sister,
Mary Elizabeth Smith, called “Lizzie”, who later married Earnest Everett
Sandefur).
Grandmother: (Laughter). “Well, I was quite small and Auntie was four
years older than me. But from the time
we got out of school after we had started home, and there was boys and girls
all the way, and they would have a fight.
They chunked at each other, playing, you know. Not really fighting…just scuffling. And I think they called it the battle of Bunker
Hill. Auntie would pull off her
fascinator and that’s where they would have their last battle on their way
home. They would get her fascinator and
throw it up in the trees…so it would catch up in the trees.
There were three roads and they turned one way and we turned
the other. And she would get their cap -
and no telling what she did do with that – probably went higher than the tree,
knowing Auntie - (her sister Mary Elizabeth ).”
Jerri: Where did you go to buy your shoes and
clothes when you got ready to go to school?”
Grandmother: “Beaver Dam.
Most of the time. But they had a
good store at Select. They had shoes
there, and grocery stores, post office, and a drugstore.”
~.~
Class in front of Bunker
Hill School in Ohio County, November 5, 1909. Photo by Schroeter, contributed
to An Ohio River Portrait Collection by Carmen Kittinger. KHS Collections.
Bunker Hill School where the Smith children went to school. One of my Grandmother’s teachers was Birch
Shields, who later married my grandfather’s sister, Martha Evelyn Cox, daughter
of James William Cox and Mary Elizabeth (Mitchell).
~ Contributed by Janice Brown
