I started school January of 1922 in the old Prairie Chapel School house which is still there. Emma Sawyer was my first teacher. Mrs. Slawright was the next one then I think it was Edna Nunley and Verna Nunley taught the other side of the school. Edna was my favorite teacher in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. She taught me and I saw here about two months ago. I told her she was the most wonderful teacher and that she taught me some things I will never forget. I still admire her to this day.
Those days, we had to walk to school. We would all line up outside the building in our seating order so that we dropped right into our seat and no one had to run around hunting for a seat.
There wasn’t a school bell on top of the building when I first started going to Prairie Chapel. My teacher had a hand bell that she would ring once at recess and then again when it was time to come back inside. We had to be real quite in our classroom. My teacher taught first grade through sixth grade. Can you imagine teaching six grades? Later on, Mr. Kelly came to Prairie Chapel and I went to Crawford school soon after that.
Ester Place would play the piano in the mornings. We sang patriotic songs and saluted the flag. It was wonderful! The teachers taught us how to be good citizens of the United States. I think we learned more in those days than most children do today. Some couldn’t even read or write when they got out of the fourth grade. I was able to read and write before I started school because my parents helped me. I have a lot of memories from that schoolhouse.
Playing ball at school were some of my happiest days. Earl Culp and his sister taught school and he started a little baseball team. We played all through school and he would drive us in an old truck to play other schools. We played Osage and Coryell City. We always called ourselves the “All Star Team of Prairie Chapel.”
Somewhere in the old school building, you’ll find a picture of all of the players. Some of them are even still living! Herman Schrader was from Fort Worth, Wallace Westerfeld is still alive, but not too many are still around.
All the kids packed a lunch. We didn’t have a brown bag though; we had an old syrup bucket. Later on my mother even bought me a nice bucket for my lunches! She would fix me a sandwich in the morning before school.
When I was in the first and second grade, my parents boarded the teachers at our house. There were ten children and six of us were in school. My mother would fix lunch for all six of us including the two teachers. Can you imagine my mother doing all of that before sending us to school? She would fix supper every night for all of us as well. I don’t think people would do that anymore.
The teachers didn’t ger paid very well. I think it started at about six hundred a month and then went up to seven hundred. Later on, I think it was a hundred-dollar allotment. We were farmers, so we didn’t have a large income in those days. The prices of grain and cattle was cheap.
We would walk to school… even when it rained. My older brother would sometimes take us to school in an old Surrey. The teachers would ride up front and the kids would get in the back. If it was still raining after four o’clock, he would come and pick us up. The rode was so muddy and dirty. There weren’t any bridges so the creeks would often run across the roads. I can’t believe how good the roads are today. It’s remarkable!
I got a whipping one time at school because I did something I shouldn’t have, but I learned my lesson and it taught me to obey at school.
Ed Gauer was my favorite friend. We always played together. I might go stay at his house one week and then the next he would stay at mine. We’d play and do things with our other friends too, but Ed Gauer and I were really close friends. We were in the same grade. Unfortunately, he has passed away.
I remember a time when it snowed. We would go outside and chunk snowballs at one another. My friend Herbert Schrader even knocked the hat off of a teacher with one! We had a lot of fun playing in the snow.
It started snowing one day when we were at school and kept snowing all day. By the next morning, the snow was six inches and by the end of it, we had twenty-three inches of snow. It stayed on the ground for days and we had to take a shovel and make a road to the cow pen. I don’t think I ever saw that much snow again. It would snow around Christmas time and stay in the bar ditches even through January. It was so beautiful. We made the biggest snowman you have ever seen!
That was the good old days.
I had a good family and I appreciate that. They were good to me.
Earlien and I were sweethearts at school. We played together and kinda liked each other. One year during Valentine’s Day, I wanted to give her a valentine. We couldn’t go to the store and buy valentines like you do today. My older sister Meta cut it out of some kind of colored paper in a heart shape. I gave it to Earlien and she was so happy. She kept it for years and years. My sister, Meta did such a pretty job.
Earlien and I started going together. We went to school and then started going to church together. We got married in 1937 at Canaan Baptist Church. We went on our honeymoon with only $25 dollars in my pocket – my grandpa had given that to me for our wedding. We spent our first night in Austin, Texas. The room was on two dollars and fifty cents. The next night we spent at my sister’s in Kyle, Texas and then we made it to San Antonio. We had such a good time! They had a big zoo – we had never seen anything like it before! We stayed the night with my sister again on our way to Brenham where my mother’s kinfolks were. We stayed about a week there with all my aunts and uncles and received presents for our wedding. We had a thirty-four Chevy Coupe at that time. I had bought it from my dad for three hundred dollars. We were happy as a lark! Driving was slow because the roads weren’t very good, but we made it back home eventually.
We moved into an old house and started making our own living. There were tough times and good times. I lost Earlien two years ago, in 1999. We were married sixty-two years and made lots of memories.
Our house was cold. When our first daughter, Jo Ann was born, I spent half the night keeping wood in the stove to keep her warm. We lived there for five years before we built our first home – which only took twenty-eight hundred dollars to complete. The main carpenter worked for four dollars a day and the help was one dollar a day. You can’t imagine that today anymore! The lumber came from a company in Moshiem for twenty-eight dollars a thousand.
I live by myself now in Temple, Texas.
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