Here I am in the 3rd grade at Curtis School. Miss Mollie Bell Cook was my teacher most of that year. Mrs. Doris Pickard finished out the year when Miss Cook moved.
I entered the new school at Curtis when I was in the 2nd grade. I remember being afraid that I would get lost and not be able to find my room. I would love to write about my second grade but will spend time today telling you all about the new Curtis school.
We rode a school bus to school. My bus driver was Mr. Grafton Young. He owned his own school bus. Upon entering the school at the tall front steps, you stepped into a large foyer. On the left was the principal's office. He didn't have a secretary or telephone. Just a large desk and some chairs. The closet in his office was always stacked high with things for school use. Later his office was used for a classroom when the 3rd grade classroom became the lunch room. On the right side of the foyer was the teachers' lounge and music room. There was a piano in the room and this is were we would go to practice during lunchtime when the teachers were not there. And Mrs. Ringsdorf taught piano lessons here when she wasn't teaching 7th grade history and some other subjects. This was a special room and you always knocked before entering. Mr. Griffin's door was always open. You still knocked to get permission to enter.
You went to your classroom after entering the building. We did most of our homework at school so we didn't have big bookbags to carry around. When I was in the 3rd grade, we had to bring our lunches. The lunch room wasn't built until I was in the 4th or 5th grade. They used the 3rd grade room for the lunch room. The students all had to bring their own plate, glass and silver for the lunch room. I guess there was no money in the beginning to buy those. My daddy helped build tables and benches. We had 2 cooks and they used student helpers during lunchtime to help serve, clean up, wash dishes, etc. The food was good most of the time.
We had outdoor toilets at the back of the school yard when the new school opened. We didn't have indoor restrooms until I was in the 5th grade. I don't know why they waited so long unless building supplies were scarce due to the WWII going on.
Our class rooms were large and plenty of windows for lighting. A big pot-bellied stove was at the front of the room and the boys took turns keeping the stove filled with wood. We had a janitor that came early every morning and started fires in all the stoves. There was a big closet at the front of the room behind the blackboard and teacher's desk. It was called the "cloak room" and this is where we placed our lunches on a shelf over the coat racks. I remember in the 3rd grade that we had a long sand table at the back of the room where we could go after we finished our work and play. We cut buildings, etc. from paper and made a city, with streets, houses, etc and this was placed on the sand table. At Christmas time that year, we were making presents for our mothers and painting privet hedge berries red by dipping them in a pail of water that had red paint floating on top of the water. We put some silver paint in another bucket of water to dip cedar branches. We had painted a gourd green and cut the top of the gourd to use as an opening to put the red berries and some silver cedar into the gourd. Someone knocked over the red paint beside where I was working and it went down the front of my new dress. I had to stay in the cloakroom while the teacher took my dress to try to remove the paint. She found something for me to wear home. And I never got to wear my favorite dress again. We didn't wear pants to school until I was in the 8th or 9th grade, and we started wearing blue jeans.
Every Friday morning we marched single file to the auditorium in the middle of the school for "chapel". Each week a different grade was in charge. We sang songs, had a Bible reading and prayer, and then we usually had a play.
We had recess in the morning and again in the afternoon after lunch. We all ran outside to play while the teachers retired to the lounge to have a cold drink. There was no organized P.E. - just free play. Different age groups played together sometimes. Jacks were a favorite game of the younger girls. Or jump rope, hopscotch, throw the can, hide and seek, Red Rover, and many other games of the day. I don't remember the teachers ever coming out to check on us. When the bell rang, we all came inside to our classrooms.
After we ate our lunches, our scraps were put into a large can and someone would take them outside to give to Curtis, the big hog that was in a pen behind the school. I guess they sold him when he was fat enough and got another one to fatten. We didn't have garbage pickup so this was a good way to dispose of left overs.
I loved going to school and never wanted to miss a day. I remember that I couldn't wait to get to the 4th grade so I could be a 4-H club member, and to own my own books. The state didn't provide books past the 3rd grade. We picked cotton and bought books from students promoted to the next grade.
These are my memories of being in the 3rd grade and some of our activities, and what our school was like.
