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September 13, 2009
WOLF CREEK HERITAGE MUSEUM NOTES by Virginia Scott MUSEUM HAPPENINGS A quiet week with all of us enjoying the fall-like weather and rain. We are still busy sorting and working with newspapers and our book collection. We are looking up all our books that are not needed in our collection on the internet and classifying them as "for sale" or "to give away". So the next time you are visiting take a look at our book table . We will also list the books on an internet site eventually (meaning when I have time to enter them). The books are old school books, novels, etc. that we don't need for our collection. Remember this Saturday is the third Saturday and time for our reception and booksigning. We will open at 4 pm and will close around 7 pm. Please join us to enjoy the artistic abilities of Sandra Elliott and Rene Heil. I promise you will have a great time. I still need volunteers for our Book committee to assist us in documenting our history. HISTORICAL MUSINGS Harry L. Zollars wrote a column entitled "Memories of the Old Home Town" for the Higgins News in the 1960's and 70's. From his column of June 1, 1967 entitled "school days" he remembers some of the fun and games that students and teachers 'enjoyed' during the school year. I put enjoyed in parentheses because after reading about them you will wondered if they really enjoyed the games . Story one: "A deep well had been dug near the Schoolhouse but no water had been found and the hole had been refilled. During the digging a bed of very fine clay had been found and much of it had been left on the surface. Both the girls and boys had many an enjoyable hour during recesses and after school making toy dishes and so forth and letting them dry in the sun's rays. The boys made balls of the clay , cut flexible limbs of willow and sticking the balls upon one end could propel them quite accurately for long distances. There was a teen age boy who was a pupil who had sadistic and criminal tendencies who delighted in making clay balls and throwing them against the backs of boys smaller which brought bruises and blisters through their light summer shirts. " (NOTE: the bully is eventually expelled for choking another student in another story) . Story two: "During the winter months when heavy snows came frequently sledding, snowballing, fort building, etc. were enjoyed . One winter the most advanced pupils had a Mr. Jones as teacher. he was quite tall and slim and had the bad habit of joining in the snow balling with his pupils and being able to throw much harder, several of the boys were hurt. Becoming weary of having large balls of snow slammed onto their backs and limbs , the boys devised a plan to put a stop to it if possible. The next afternoon at recess Mr. Jones was among the boys and making & throwing snowballs as rapidly as possible. About this time the five boys in the plot ...made a run behind the coal house and returned with arms loaded with snow balls and a barrage pelted the teacher. One expertly thrown ball struck him upon the right elbow and with a yell of pain his arm became limp and unusable. For two weeks he was unable to write upon the blackboard much less cast a snowball and the boys got relief from his fun. The five had made up a lot of "soakers" , balls made of slush snow, and had let them freeze overnight into hard balls of hard ice. ( OUCH ) Story three: " Very few of the parents in those days would permit the teenagers to attend either the square dances or the round ones. And they could not dance at parties held in the homes. But they were able to get by with playing "Skip to My Lou" which was simply dancing under a familiar name, and other such games, with Pete Jenkins playing a harmonica and the others singing. Such games as "Button, Button, who has the Button ", "Post Office" in which a letter was a kiss from the girl postmaster with packages as lesser caresses; "Spin the Plate" and many others which to the present generation would seem quite tame and very boring." I hope you enjoy the games and school yard memories of yester years and I wonder what the names of the games the present generations play on the school yard. Send us some. Have a good week and welcome back to school. |
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