South Dakota Mary

The old school house and lunch pails

Speaking of Mom's cookies makes me think of our lunch pails when we went to the old school house.

My brother Ted and I started school together. We went to all eight grades in this old school house. There was just one teacher for all the grades. We walked a mile and a half to school every day.

We always took lunch pails to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...peanut butter with apple, strawberry, or plum jelly. We always had a cookie, an apple, or a piece of cake in our pails, too. My mother baked one cake a week on Saturday. It had to last for a week.

Photo from Mary's photo album, taken years later

Days in the old school house

At school, we sat at little desks. To get into the desks, we had to flip the tops over. Then we had to flip them back to write on top of them.

There was an average of eight or ten students in school—maybe fifteen at times—and one teacher. The classes were sometimes combined. For example, the seventh and eighth grade arithmetic might be together. You did all the subjects in one week.

At the old school house, we all had duties. We cleaned the chalkboards and erasers and got the desks in order. I helped out by getting drinking water. I took a pail and walked over to the neighbor's house to get water. Then we all drank out of a dipper.

The most fun at school, though, was playing baseball during recess at the noon hour.

Photo: Stormy Peters
View of the old schoolhouse today