Introduction

The one-room country school named Elmer, District No. 148, played an important role in the McMurry family. My grandfather, my father and I all graduated from there. Our daughter Glenda even went there a few weeks in the first grade. This happened in 1952 when my family stayed on the farm with my folks while I was in Europe on a four-month's State Department assignment. After graduating from what was then called grammar school and receiving a teacher's certificate, my grandfather McMurry taught school. The McMurry genealogy I have states that he taught for eleven years in schools south of Hutchinson. He probably taught at Elmer school.

When my father attended Elmer, it was a nine-grade school, but when I went there, the ninth grade had been dropped. There was room for about thirty pupils in the school, but all the eight years I went there, we had a number of empty desks. There weren't always students for each grade, and sometimes there would be only one student in a grade. The poor teacher had lots of subjects to prepare for the variety of grades she might have in any particular year.

Except for schools in a larger city, like Hutchinson, the Reno County school board had control of all the schools in the county. To be certain that all kids were ready for graduation from eighth grade, examinations were given at the end of both the seventh and eighth grades. These were given away from your home school. Believe me, those exam days were scary times.

The county sent out special examination questions each month or so, just for study. In that way, the teacher could help us prepare for the coming finals. I well remember how the teacher would cut them apart and pass them out to us to answer. The teacher also was given the answers so she could easily grade our papers.

Each year, there was a special ceremony at the Convention Hall in Hutchinson for the graduating eighth graders. We all marched down the aisles and onto the stage, following the school board members and any other dignitaries present. After certain preliminaries and speeches, which always seemed too long, the students' names were called one by one, and each one stepped forward to receive the diploma. Then the county superintendent and president of the board would always make a big thing out of presenting special certificates to those students with the highest grades. Also, those students who had perfect attendance were honored. I never did get any kind of honor for my grades, but I did get a certificate for perfect attendance.

I had to go into Hutchinson to Sherman Junior High for my ninth grade. I'll tell more about that later. Most of the children in my school were Amish and they didn't attend school after the first eight grades.
 

Walking to and from School

If I walked on the road, as opposed to cutting across fields, Elmer school was about a mile and one-half from my home. Sometimes I walked fast, sometimes slowly. It just depended on the situation. I always hoped that a train would arrive about the time I got to the railroad crossing. That was fun! It was even more fun if a freight train came along. The faster and longer the better. When that whistle blew way down the track, I knew then to hurry so I could get close to the train. It was a beautiful sight to see the steam spurt out in rhythm to the shrill whistle sounds. No matter how often I got to see a train, each time it was a thrill.

The story is told of a little schoolboy, who could have been me, working at his desk when the train engineer blew his whistle. Nothing could keep that boy at his desk. Dropping everything and without the permission of the teacher, he rushed to the window to watch that train go by.

"Johnnie!" (It could have been "Glenn," of course.) "Haven't you ever seen a train before?" she asked. "Not that one," he said.

I don't know whether he saw the rest of the train or whether she made him take his seat. Being surprised at the honest answer, she probably didn't make him take his seat. I have a feeling that he saw that train from beginning to end that day.

Like that little boy in the story, I never missed a chance of watching a train go by. In the little town of Burrton, where my Grandmother and Grandfather Deal lived, the trains didn't make regular stops. If, for some reason, a stop was necessary, a signal was given some miles before the trains reached town. Usually, they went speeding through. When I was visiting my grandparents, it was always fun to try to get close enough to watch them go by. If one of us heard the train coming as we were playing in the yard, we'd yell, "Hurry, let's go watch the train." Then we'd run as fast as we could. However, unless it was a long freight, we seldom made it in time to see anything except the back of the caboose. If we were privileged to watch a long freight go by, we had to be careful not to start counting the cars. Superstition said that if you counted the cars, there would be a death in your family.

I always stood back a respectable distance from the tracks. Someone had once told me that if you stood too close to a speeding train, you could be sucked right under the wheels. Although I was pretty sure that the person who told me was just making it up, I didn't want to take any chances.

Another reason for trying to get to the tracks for train watching at Burrton was the mail-bag arrangement. The station master packed all the outgoing mail in a special mail bag which had rings on both the bottom and the top. Close to the track was an upright pole with two rods which pointed toward the train. These were just the right distance apart so that the mail-bag rings could slide onto them. The mail car has an ingenious hook device on it's side that would catch the bag close to the middle and snatch it off the rods. The mail sorter on the train would in return throw out a bag containing the mail for Burrton.

I remember seeing mail poles in several small towns around our area. Without the mail-bag device, those trains would have lost lots of time stopping and starting. Trains had the right-of-way as they sped through the country, and it was your responsibility to watch for them. When I was a kid, there were no flashing lights and automatic arms barring traffic across the track. There were only bells and loud whistles, and accidents happened all too often.

As you can see, when I start thinking about my train experiences as a kid, my mind wanders. I started to discuss going to and coming from school.

Naturally, we weren't allowed to play on the railroad tracks during school hours, but slipping a nail or so on the rail on the way to school wouldn't hurt anything. After school we could then see what happened.

Often, the Gingrich kids, Joe, John, Fred and Merle, and Lee Bryce Crupper and I walked to school together.

"Did you bring any nails with you to school this morning?" was a common question asked. One nail would be enough, but two big nails crossed and placed on the train rail would be welded together when run over by the heavy engine.

The problem was finding the smashed nails after school. That was always an exciting time. They rarely stayed on the rails after the heavy engine wheels hit them. In fact we were lucky to find them at all after several trains passed. When we did find them, much enthusiasm followed.

"I marked my spot on the ground nearby the rail. There they are!"

"Look, it's a perfect cross. They stayed together!" or "Shucks, mine didn't stick together. I'll try again tomorrow."

Sometimes, we kids liked to detour on our way home in order to walk across the railroad bridge. It was fun and daring to walk on the ties and rails.

The bridge was a big wooden trestle one with struts every direction to brace it. The main pilings were tall pointed telephone poles driven into the ground. Sometimes we would get to watch them replace some of the pilings. The steam-powered driver they used was a beast. It had high guiding rails and a real heavy weight that the operator would raise to the top of the rails. When the weight got to the top, it was dropped onto the pole. At first the pole went down quite fast, but the deeper it went, the harder it was to push it down.

It was always fun to cross the bridge and then turn around and come back, but knowing that a train might be coming was scary. The only time I did it was when other kids were along with me and after school when the teacher had left for the day. When there were several of us, there were more eyes to watch for the black coal smoke of oncoming trains. There was no way to get off the road bed if you got caught. Ugh!

"Look out, you guys, the train is coming!" someone might yell, and we'd hurry either to get across or turn around and go back.

Another way to determine whether a train was near was to put your ear on the rail. If the train was coming, you could hear the clickety, clickety of the wheels as they hit the rail joints. That was a sure way of knowing the train was close. I suppose the element of danger added to our fun.

If the weather was nice I would cut across the fields on my way to and from school. Dad gave me that lesson on how to get to school more quickly. He said to get from home to school go just as straight as a crow flies. It was fun cutting across. When school opened in early September, it was wheat drilling time and the soil was loose. As the wheat sprouted and grew, it became a nice blanket of green.

The technique for making a path was obvious to me. Follow my own footsteps and a path would show in a few days. On my path were several fences and a ravine to cross. It was OK in dry weather, but a good rain would make me walk on the roadway. The roads had bridges, but I didn't have that pleasure on my cut-off path.

If it was winter time and snow fell, walking to school on my path might be a problem. Snow cover up to five or six inches would be fine, but a little soft, wet, fluffy snow stuck to my feet. I'd have to wear my boots and heavy boots made walking difficult.

The fun thing was to walk to school the morning after a new snow fall. What a beautiful sight. If the weather stayed very cold for a couple of nights, the snow would have a frozen crust. It would be hard enough to walk on without it breaking.

Many times, the north or northwest wind would come while it was snowing, and by the next morning there would be beautiful snow drifts. On those occasions, Dad would take me to school. At times, the drifts were so high, we'd have to shovel the snow away so we could get the Model-T out of the shed. Drifts like those would remain on the ground for weeks.

Speaking of snow drifts reminds me of the cottontails and jackrabbits that would burrow into the drifts to keep warm. When I'd get home from school or on week-ends, Rover and I would go together to attempt to catch them. It was rarely done! When we got to the opening of the hole, they would break through the snow at another place and get away from us.

Another interesting sight on my way to school was the old passenger depot, now rarely used. The passenger trains were few and far between. The automobile was beginning to take over as a faster way to get from here to there. I always liked to stop a few minutes to inspect that structure. There were names and interesting pictures engraved into its walls. Some of them were slightly bawdy or dirty, the product of railroad bums and, sometimes, the older boys from school.

If I found I had tarried too long anywhere along my path, I would rush across the last part. I couldn't be late. My report card would let my folks know about that.
 

Miss Wilma

The teacher I best remember of my eight years at Elmer is Wilma Carroll. When she was hired as our teacher at Elmer school, our parents thought it nice for us to call her Miss Wilma. The Carroll family had lived in and around the Hutchinson area for many years. My folks and others who had known the family for a long time thought of Miss Wilma as more than just another school teacher.

Since we always had more than seven pupils in our school, I'm not sure why there are so few in this picture with our teacher,. Miss Wilma. I'm second from the left on the back row.

Miss Wilma gave me my first paying job. For the fantastic figure of one dollar a month I was to bring in the kindling and coal from the coal house. I'm not sure why she gave me that job. Perhaps she didn't want to get her hands and dress dirty, or it could be she wanted to get all her papers graded before going home from school.

Two things about the job made it not too lucrative. First, I didn't have a year-round job since we didn't have to heat the school room during the warmer days. Second, Stanley, another third grader came into the picture. Miss Wilma gave the job to him after I had it a short while. I don't know why she gave it to him so soon, but I do know I lost my job. I thought I was doing just fine, but I got fired! Get hired and get fired! That's the way it happens sometimes.

Miss Wilma did give me what I considered a rather poor excuse. She said, "Stanley lives along the road to and from school and I can give him rides. You have to walk to school early or leave late to do the job. I don't want you to have to do that."

The bad feelings about losing the job didn't last long, however. I really didn't like having to rush around getting the job done before leaving for home. The money didn't mean much to me either. Secretly, I think I was happy about losing that job. I now had more time to play, and Stanley had to stay after school or come early.

Miss Wilma had a beau. Honestly, I didn't like the idea of someone taking my place! I liked her a lot so when that crazy suave nut, with his shiny, slick, black Tudor Model-T Ford sedan, got into the picture I resented him. He was just not good enough for Miss Wilma. I was sure of that!

To make things worse, once in awhile he would pick her up after school. Sometimes, if I were walking home on the main road, he would pass me. On a hot, dry day a white cloud of dust would trail behind his car, or blow around in front of it, depending upon the direction of the wind. Either way, I got the benefit of the dust!

That wasn't all. There was always that moment when he returned with Miss Wilma. Sometimes, he would stop the car and the door would open.

"Jump in," Miss Wilma would say.

That crazy guy always started like a bullet. When we came to the railroad track, he'd hit it full speed. It was awful!

Since the train turned as it went through Elmer, the track was not at all even at that point. Slow speed as one crossed it was the usual rule, but not for Miss Wilma's beau. He threw caution to the wind and kept going full speed.

When his wheels hit the raised-up rail of the curve, watch out! I didn't exactly take a flying leap, but I certainly did hit the top!

That guy never would say he was sorry, or even utter, "Oops!"

Miss Wilma would say something like, "Ooooooh," and that was it. I always knew she was embarrassed. Of course, I'd never say a word. I'd just soothe my feelings and calmly say "Thanks for the ride," when they let me out at my corner.
 

Other Teachers

I had other teachers at Elmer besides Miss Wilma. There were Miss Tinsley, Miss Mary and another teacher whose name escapes me. I tried to forget her on purpose because she was an awful teacher. She was my seventh grade teacher and she almost caused me to fail the county examinations. That teacher was also the one that believed in the ruler as a means of punishment. She always had it in for Lee Bryce. One day she told him to hold out his hand, knuckles up, and whacked him several times with the steel edge of the ruler. Not only did Lee Bryce yell out, but he had festers that lasted for a week or so. I told my folks about that incident and they were incensed over it. One morning when I was in line marching into the school room, just as I stepped into the foyer, she slapped me good on both sides of my head. I was stunned! I had no idea what provoked that slapping. I didn't say anything, but walked to my desk bewildered. The only thing I could figure out was that my folks had said something to her concerning her punishment of Lee Bryce and she was taking her anger out on me. She didn't finish the year out. Since I was so far behind in arithmetic, Mom had to help me at home. Miss Grace came to finish the term, and returned the next year, which was the year I graduated from the eighth grade, thus finishing my schooling at Elmer School.
 

Amish

This seems an appropriate place to tell more about the Amish people who lived in our area. They were all farmers and it seems most had come from Pennsylvania to form a community south of Hutchinson. I do know that my wife's grandparents were in the Pennsylvania group.

Before I got to grade school at Elmer, I didn't know much about the Amish folk. I could watch them going and coming from town in their buggies. Some buggies were pulled by one and some by two horses. All I knew then was that it was a very slow way to get "from here to there." I didn't catch on to the difference between the one and two horse arrangements until I realized it had something to do with the load being carried. If you were making a quick ride to town with one person, one snappy horse could do the job. That horse could start out on a trot and never stop until it reached its destination, or if the driver pulled it to a stop. The two-horse rigs were for taking the family to town or church. Those horses were always slower and capable of pulling more weight before tiring.

That was about all I paid attention to about the Amish. I did notice that their clothes were very dull colors. The men always had black felt hats, and wore black suspenders and awkward pants. The women always had black bonnets and plain-colored very long dresses.

Soon after I started to school I started to observe how the Amish boys pants were made. I discovered they had no buttons at all, just hooks and eyes. I never did learn why the Amish disliked buttons. Watching the boys in the toilet was interesting to me. In the first place, there was no hole in their pants such as I had. I thought that was a dumb way to make clothes for boys and men. True, I hated the buttons that had to be unbuttoned to open the hole, especially if my overalls were new. Even when they had been washed several times, those darned buttons were almost impossible to open. Oh for convenient zippers, but they hadn't been invented yet!

There was enough of a problem with my type pants. When I was in a hurry, the results were generally disastrous. Rebuttoning was just as much of a problem, and as a result, I usually just didn't bother.

The Amish boys' pants had a band around the waist that would stay hooked at all times unless they were going to undress or needed to sit down on the toilet. In the front of the pants was a large flap, which, when dropped, exposed their entire front. What a great idea! No buttons to unbutton or rebutton each time. At first I thought that was a great idea, but then when I realized there were eight or ten hooks and eyes to either unhook or hook before the task of going to the toilet was finished, I changed my mind. They would have been a problem for me. What I really liked was my bib overalls with a big slot and the buttonholes already unbuttoned ready for use.

Another thing different about the Amish kids was their haircuts. They were all uniquely similar. As it was commonly supposed that their parents used an upside-down bowl or crock to guide their scissors, we called them "crock" haircuts. Their hair was never thinned, and was always straight and jet black. Apparently, the crock was placed on the head so that in front it was just above the eyebrows and at the sides just the lower tips of the ears showed.

There were several Amish kids in my school. Some of their names were Freddie, Nettie, Levi, Jerry, Henry and Sarah. There were others but I can't remember all of them. They all spoke low German or Dutch. The Gingrich kids, who lived closest to me and were my best friends, were only one step from Amish so I counted them as Amish. Their family had forsaken the Amish ways and had become Old Mennonites. After Helen, my sister died, I remember one year I was the only non-Amish kid in school. That was unusual, however. There were usually non-Amish kids. Some I remember were Nadine and her older brother, Goldie, Stanley, Virginia, and Wallie.

Telling about the Amish kids, reminds me of Jerry and Henry. They were brothers and they often got very mad at each other. When this happened, watch out! A real fight took place if they weren't stopped. First, they glared at each other and made horrible faces. Their eyes glistened and their thick black hair shook on their heads as they threatened each other. Then the fighting began!

"Teacher! Teacher!" one of the girls usually yelled, running inside the school to tell the teacher. "Jerry and Henry are fighting again!"

Now when the Amish brothers got into a fight it could hardly be called a "brotherly" squabble. In the first place they were large boys for their age, Jerry being slightly larger. That didn't make any difference to Henry, however. The fact he was a little smaller made him fight that much harder.

When the boys started to squabble, none of us wanted to get involved. What took place could have passed as pure honest-to-goodness fighting. Those kids used none of the neat rules set down in 1867 by the Englishman Sir John Sholto Dough, the 8th Marquis of Queensberry. His rules were known as the Queensberry Rules for Fighting. I don't know anything about the rules for fighting before 1867, but I do know that Henry and Jerry had their own rules. In fact, they had no rules at all. I watched several of those fights and there was nothing in the Queensberry rules I read years later remotely resembling what I saw happening.

First, it seemed as if they were trying to break each other's necks. Then one of them would fall to the ground. The other one would stomp on him as if he were a sack of oats. Then they began to yell and cuss in Dutch and cry like babies.

"Jerry! Henry! Stop that fighting right this minute!" the teacher begged, when she arrived on the scene. But to no avail. The fight was on and would continue until their internal springs wound down.

Most of the kids stood around, at a safe distance, and watched the fracas. Some of the girls were afraid and cried, but others just giggled. I, secretly, was on Henry's side because he was my age. I felt that Jerry was really just a big brute. Those boys pulled hair out by its roots, clawed faces and arms with their fingernails until the blood ran, and hit each other with both fists, smashing their noses, cheeks and eyebrows. Black eyes showed right away. They twisted arms, legs, fingers and ears, and screamed bloody-murder. They kicked each other viciously in and around every known sensitive body area. Oh, yes, I forgot to say that they could bite like badgers when the opportunity came.

Those fights between Jerry and Henry were quite frequent, but, surprisingly, they rarely hurt themselves seriously. No knives or weapons were used, thank goodness.

Finally, when they had worn each other out, the teacher's commands would prevail.

"March yourselves right inside, right now," she commanded. "The rest of you go take your seats!"

We kids responded meekly, but only after the boys got up from the ground and started to go inside with her following them.

"Jerry, march yourself right to that front corner and hide your face in it. Henry, you do the same in the other corner." She really was in control now. "And don't either of you speak or leave those corners until I tell you!"

Henry usually bawled and snotted around, acting sorry for his actions, but Jerry never had any remorse at all. He just stood there.

"Children, continue with your school work," the teacher commanded.

We did, and finally Jerry and Henry quieted down and the teacher let them take their seats. Her only weapon was her lecturing and she could do that quite well.
 

Bells

Both the Methodist Church and Elmer school had cast iron bells in their belfries. The bell in the church seemed smaller to me, but since it was a lot higher up, I probably imagined it was smaller. Actually, it must have been larger because it rang so much louder. The church folks wanted it to be heard at a greater distance.

The bells and how they worked always were exciting to me. I was too small to climb up to the church belfry so I'll have to tell you about the school bell.

Like most country school buildings, there was a belfry just above the entrance doors. The bell was about twenty inches in diameter at the bottom. The top was welded to an up-side-down u-shaped bar. The two ends of the u-shaped bar were fitted into a "cradle-shaped" metal arrangement which was fastened to the floor of the belfry. The bell and the u-shaped bar were well-balanced in the cradle holder. Suspended from the top of the bell on the inside was the ringer. It was about fourteen inches long with a large iron ball on the end. When the bell itself was moved, the flopper remained somewhat stationary until it was hit by the rim of the bell.

A large iron pulley was welded to one side of the u-shaped bar. A long rope was fastened to the pulley at its four o'clock position. This rope was wrapped around the pulley in a clockwise manner, over the top and then it was threaded straight down through the belfry, the roof and a hole in the ceiling of the front hall.

The bell rope was long enough to let the smallest kid ring the bell and sometimes the teacher would say, "Who wants to ring the bell this time?"

What a silly question to ask when ten or twelve kids are standing around just dying to pull down on that rope.

"Can I ring the bell?" Jerry, one of the larger kids asked.

The teacher would probably correct his "can" for a "may" before answering. "Yes, but be careful not to pull too hard, or--. Oh no, she gasped!"

But it was too late. She knew she had made a mistake letting Jerry pull the rope. It was a disaster! He had pulled the rope so hard that the bell turned completely over. The bell went clank and came to a complete standstill.

"Look what you've done," she said. "Now we're not going to have a bell until someone climbs onto the roof and fixes it."

"I'll do it," Henry said, rushing to get the ladder from the coal room where it was stored for such emergencies.

Ordinarily it was no easy task to put that long ladder up to the roof, but, Henry was a strong kid. As quick as a wink, he was up on the roof. The rest of us kids circled around at a distance to watch. The pitch of the roof was so steep that Henry had to hang on to the edge to keep from slipping down.

"Henry, don't climb up there, you're going to fall and kill yourself," the teacher called.

But Henry was the hero of the day and he had no intention of falling. He carefully edged himself up the roof and moved closer and closer to the belfry. The kids were having a ball. The teacher was petrified. The entire thing was a picnic.

I was watching the whole thing at the foot of the ladder. I knew that someone had to hold the foot of the ladder to keep it from slipping.

Soon Henry reached the belfry and carefully pulled himself through the opening where the bell was hung.

"Hi kids!" Henry called from the belfry. "There are pigeon nests all over the place up here; and, yes, there are some eggs, too!"

"Henry, stop your messing around and turn that bell back where it belongs. Don't forget to straighten the rope and slip it onto the pulley."

Soon Henry was climbing out from the belfry, but as in many situations, getting up is the easiest part. As he started down feet first he lost his grip on the edge of the belfry and began to slide. The teacher and the kids screamed. They knew Henry was going to slide right off the edge of the roof.

"Henry, Henry, you're going to get killed!" she shrieked.

Yes, Henry was sliding down the roof, but he had flattened himself, slowing his descent. I had watched his sliding and quickly moved the ladder so he could feel it with his feet. Finally feet and ladder connected, halting the sliding Henry. He carefully finished the descent to the ground, and stood there proud of himself.

"Henry, you scared me half to death," the teacher gasped. Then, teacher as she was, she made an object lesson over the entire escapade. "From now on, I think I should ring the bell. We don't want that to happen again. We are lucky that Henry wasn't hurt or even killed."

Frankly, the kids enjoyed the entire situation. They had a very, very good time and didn't have to go to class while it was going on.

Henry was the hero for that day. I can still see him grinning.
 

The Toilets (more commomly called Outhouses)

In good weather, when we kids arrived at school, we played in the playground until the teacher rang the first bell. She was always on schedule. She would make her trip to the toilet before she rang the first gong. Everyone knew what to do on the first gong. That was the warning that we must stop playing and rush to the toilet before the second gong. I was one of those kids that played hard and it was difficult to stop playing long enough to realize I needed to go to the toilet. You needed to be one of the first ones there if you wanted to sit down. Although there were four holes, one large, two medium and one small, it seemed that all the holes were already wet by the time I arrived. The boys weren't too careful at aiming at even the large one. If the toilet was full, we could use the outside blind. In those days there was nothing like today's nice gleaming porcelain urinals. In a few places there would be a wood trough to pee in, but not at my school. If I was inside, I had to stand there and look down at the piles below. It always gagged me. Those old toilets always stunk to high heaven. Someone would clean them at the beginning of the school year, but by the time school ended, they would be a mess. The one used by the boys was especially bad.

Toilet paper? What else but a new catalog with lots of black ink all over it