Looking Back to School Days at Evergreen No I

My first teacher was Ethelyn Bailey, the Doctor’s daughter from Lake Preston. She had graduated from High School that spring and was a very pretty young lady, with many lovely clothes, I remember. She drove out from town every morning with a horse and top buggy – a white horse. She was never on time but that fact didn’t bother her in the least. It didn’t bother the pupils, either, as we had more time on the playground.

In the winter, though, that school house was a very cold place to come to, after walking in the cold, chilled to the bone. The older boys had to get the fire going and many days the room didn’t get warm until noon. We kept our coats and overshoes on, huddled around the stove. How we all suffered from cold feet and chilblains!

The teacher, of course – was expected to be there early enough to fire up – that’s what she was paid for! Not only to teach and keep order but to be janitor besides. None of the pupils seemed angry with her because she was like a friend to all of us and everyone loved her.

As I wrote earlier I had already read the First Grade Reader so she had to find another book for me. She tried me in “Tanglewood Tales”, but I couldn’t read that. It must have been quite difficult. I don’t recall where she got extra books, maybe from the school library in town as there were no other beginners books in our little school library.

One night she invited me to go home with her and the folks gave me permission. I was a happy little girl, to go riding to town in her snappy buggy, meeting her folks (although I’m sure her father the doctor was acquainted with our family) that evening she took me down town to see my first movie. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was a comedy. A girl was running up and down stairs pursued by some ruffians and her way of escaping them kept the audience laughing. Of course it was a silent movie with the captions of conversations under each picture. The next morning her mother packed lunch for me too in the teacher’s basket and how proud I was the next day to be eating noon lunch with the teacher. I’m sure she took other girls home with her for an overnight stay but I was the first.

Bentena, Mabel and I were in school that year. Mabel in the second grade and Bentena in the fifth, I think. She must have been allowed to skip a year by one of the earlier teachers.

I don’t remember much about that year, except that the first graders, even the second and third grades didn’t have enough to do so were sent out to play before the noon hour and again in the afternoon. We “bothered” the upper grades by just sitting there doing nothing.

Every Christmas we had a program, with a big tree that we trimmed with paper chains or strung popcorn and cranberries. Other decorations were made from bright colored paper. Wax candles were attached in special candle holders and when lit they were carefully watched because of the fire danger. The pupils drew names and this was kept very secret so our little ten cent gift could be a surprise. Gifts were given to the teacher by each family so there was always a heap of presents under the tree. Candy was passed around after the program.

That was the year I fell on the schoolground and broke my collar bone. I wore my arm in a sling until the bone knit so I had to stay home from school. This hurt me more than the pain of the broken bone.

In the spring three schools had a joint Last Day of School Picnic at Lake Henry. A program was given after the picnic dinner. This was held in the “Pavilion” a large building in the grove on the south side of the lakes, where dances and other gatherings were held in the summer. I spoke a piece, but I wasn’t too nervous as I had a new dress to bolster my ego. Here is my recitation:

The next fall, 1913, Esther started school and now we were four girls to send off to school each morning. Our teacher was Mildred Archer. She was a dedicated, strict teacher, also from Lake Preston but I think she boarded up in the country.

To make the walk to school a bit warmer for us Tena sewed black sateen bloomers to wear over our long underwear. I must say they were a great help if only our feet could have been warmer. Heavy overshoes helped on our walk but feet got cold after getting to that drafty schoolhouse.

Some of the games we played at noon and recess were Drop the Handkerchief, Dare Base, Steal Sticks, Last Couple Out, Flying Dutchman, Hide and Seek, and of course Fox and Geese when the first snow covered the ground. If the winter snow was heavy there was always a snow drift that formed in the school yard for coasting but for real coasting we went to a hill about a fourth of a mile west of the schoolhouse. In order to have more time for coasting we dispensed with opening exercises or took shorter recesses to make time for a longer noon hour. The teacher rang the bell early enough to give us time to get back to the schoolhouse.

Opening exercises were usually singing in the morning and the teacher read books to use after the noon recess. On Friday afternoons we had spelling or arithmetic drills and contests or we were given time for art work.

The next teacher I remember was Clara Nelson. Even tho’ she had been a teacher for a year or two she hadn’t learned a thing about keeping order. There was simply no discipline at all. Big boys in school for only a few months in the winter kept the school in constant uproar with their sass, mockery and general disruption. She would get angry and come at them with a ruler, and they would sneeringly hold out their hands for the whack the expected. They would then pretend to cry because their hands hurt – she did hit them, and they would wrap their hands in their handkerchief. So she would get the giggles and that was the end of the punishment.

One day she got after one of the younger boys with the broom. He grabbed it out of her hand, broke it, then jumped out of an open window and stayed out the rest of the afternoon. It is a wonder any of us learned anything that year.

The next two teachers I recall as being model, exemplary teachers, we studied, learned, enjoyed school, as they made things interesting for us. We had arithmetic and spelling drills, memorized good poetry and were a willing bunch of kids.

Once during the year we gave a program for the public and I loved to practice for the plays and dialog. The songs were usually patriotic and Mabel was our organist. After the program there was a basket social to raise money for new books for the Library – it was growing slowly – now we had The Five Little Peppers books – stories about a widow who raised her five children by taking in sewing.

Lillian Novak was our teacher for two years, I think when I was in the 5^th and 6^th grades. One day I remember a traveling musician stopped at our school with a fiddle case under his arm. He seemed to be quite an old man, but maybe not so old. Anyone over 25 was old when you were only 10 or 12 years old yourself. He was afoot, seemed to be quite ragged. He stopped to play for us, but didn’t visit, or tell us his name. After his concert which was very good, I remember, he went on down the road.

Lillian was the only teacher we had who read from the Bible and opened the day with a prayer. We always had the Flag Salute too, the flag was on the front wall in the school room as we didn’t have a flagpole. On the side walls were pictures of Lincoln and Washington, one called “Saved” and pictured a huge dog with a small child lying across his front paws. In the background was the ocean so we surmised that the dog had rescued the boy from the water. Another picture I remember was named “The Doctor” and pictured an elderly man sitting by the bedside of a sick child. Pictures that each told a story.

We earned enough money at a basket social when Lillian was teaching to have a cistern dug near the school house. Water was hauled out from town. Before this we didn’t have drinking water all day unless we carried it from home and I don’t think we made a practice of that.

I think I mentioned earlier in my ramblings that Stephen Karban was our auctioneer at the basket socials and was always a big part of the entertainment.

Evelyn Morgan was my seventh grade teacher and we all liked her. She lived in town but I think she boarded in the country. She stayed sometimes at our place. By this time it was just Esther and me left as Mabel took the 8^th grade in town and Benta was in High School.

By this time WWI was rumbling in Europe and we heard so much about “Kaiser Bill” and the Huns who had dreams of conquering all of Europe and maybe the world. Europe was a world away to our young minds but we brought clippings from the Newspapers to school with great interest in what was going on. We had regular Current Event Classes when we read our clippings. Evelyn then put them on a Bulletin Board along with pictures of the current Movie Stars, like Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Barbara Bans, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and others.

Every spring we watched for the first gophers to appear and the boys would snare them with a loop of twine. Some one would pour water down the hole to get them to come out. There was water in the road ditches after the melting snow.

Then of course there was baseball. No set rules – Just hit the ball and run for base. If we didn’t have a bat a narrow board did the job very well, and a solid rubber ball wsa even better than a baseball. If a boy owned a real bat and ball he was a very lucky boy, indeed.

In April 1917 President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Was it after the Lusitania was sunk? I should go hunt up the details in the Encyclopedia but maybe you will. What a patriotic fervor hit our community, our school, our country! It was a war to end war – to make the world safe for Democracy. We had extra patriotic programs in school, we learned to knit wash clothes and scarves, we saved our dimes for the Savings Stamps and one after another the young men went off to war. Some enlisted, it was to be a great adventure, they thought.

Sylvia was in North Dakota as this time and met Louis Shelby who was visiting his brother who was living near Calmer, Emil, and Tena. He was on his way to camp. They waited until after the war was over to be married and their wedding took place in the new house in Lake Preston after 1920.

Johnny Nelson went overseas and saw front line action but came home when the war was over without a scratch. He and Bentena were married also after his return.

Julius was the only one of the brothers who served in the armed forces. I imagine he could have had a deferment because of his work on the farm but he wanted adventure. He spent his time at Camp Funston, Kan. And I think he was there about nine months when the war was over in Nov 1918.

As I write about Julius an incident comes to my mind that shows how he helped care for his little sisters.

This happened in 1914 or 1915. It was a cold winter morning. The wind was blowing from the North West in real Dakota style, snow was drifting in fact, it was a blizzardy morning. We set out for school, Mabel, Esther and me, and Bentena, too, unless she was going to school in town by that time. I’m not quite sure about that. In the shelter of the trees the weather didn’t seem so bad but as we got into the open the wind hit us full force and it was cold! Esther said “I’m going back home” and she did just that. The rest of us felt like it, too, but kept on going. School was in session when the door was opened. We turned around to see who had come in. There was Julius with Esther bundled in a shawl, which was pinned over her coat. He had walked ahead of her to break the wind. Without a word to anyone he closed the door and went home. The storm was soon over and the folks must have known it would be or they wouldn’t have sent us out in it.

BentenaAnoraUglem_1913_s.JPG (24599 bytes)

Bentena Anora Uglem in 1913

While Julius was in the army, Bentena was Pa’s right hand man. She learned to drive the car, could hitch up a team of horses and rake hay and helped with the other field work. I think we all helped (or tried to) shock grain and help with chores but I remember at least one hired man we had, maybe for corn picking. We thought he was a little funny as he spoke Norwegian almost entirely and was constantly humming or lightly singing as he worked. He was maybe a “Newcomer” from the old country.

I remember Julius first furlough, He surprised us in a most delightful way. One day Roy Rich drove in the yard on his way home from town in a double box wagon. As he stopped we ran out to see what he wanted. Julius was hiding in the box and jumped up as we came close. Oh! What a happy home coming it was. We thought he looked really snappy in his khaki uniform and we were so proud of our soldier brother. Only a few days and he was gone again, back to Kansas.

Memories of the War wouldn’t be complete without relating the agony and terror of the Flu epidemic of 1918. No family was exempt, thousands died. Our family came down with it, one after another, but luckily not all at once. All but Sylvia – She took care of all of us but didn’t join us in our misery. I don’t know how she happened to be home, unless she was teaching near by and her school was closed because all the pupils were ill. She put cold wet cloths on our foreheads and bathed us to keep the fever down. The danger in the illness was the cough and pneumonia that followed the fever if care wasn’t taken. There were no antibiotics in those days and this wasn’t an ordinary cold, either. Many folks who thought they had recovered got up and out too soon and had a relapse. By that time nothing seemed to help them. Thankfully, we all recovered and we girls were back in school after several days absence. I’m sure she used hot poultices on our chests, too – maybe mustard mixture, or onions – great home remedies. Goose grease mixed with liniment maybe helped, too.

There were some great songs written during the war and we learned them all. Sheet music was plentiful and the only way we had to become acquainted with the hit of the day. There were rousing patriotic marches to pep up the emotions to a feverish war pitch, to make the war seem like a glorious adventure, a duty to serve mankind. Others were in a sentimental vein to remind us all that it wasn’t all glory but a sad parting between parents and sons, boys and their sweethearts, brothers and sisters. Some in a lighter vein we liked to sing, such as the following little ditty:

Other songs were “Tipperary”, an Irish English ballad that became popular in America, also, “Oh! How I Hate to Get up in the Morning”, evidently written by a soldier boy. This song ends with these morbid lines –

“Some Day I’m going to murder the Bugler, Some day you’re going to find him dead! And then I’ll get the other Pup, the guy who woke the Bugler up, and then I’ll spend the rest of my life in bed.”

Then there was “How you Gonna Keep ‘em down on the Farm, After they’ve seen Paree?”

The most rousing one of all in the marching or Comic vein was “Over There”. It was a song containing one or two verses and a long chorus.

The poem “In Flander’s Field” became a classic and Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” was set to music about this time.

The Armistice was signed on Nov 11, 1918. Now the war was officially over and there would be no more wars! This was the end of tyranny. The League of Nations was organized and it would keep the peace around the world. So it seemed but the world wasn’t ready for such an agreement and it wasn’t long before the League was disbanded. No one knew in 1918 that in less than twenty years Hitler and his Nazi Army would be sweeping through the European countries, making one conquest after another. But that is another time and another story.