School Buses and Discipline

The school buses that transported the rural children were rather a motley assortment of vehicles. The older buses were to all appearances sort of “home-made” contrivances with the bus part fabricated of wood and set on some sort of small truck chassis. These were relatively small and could perhaps carry at most a dozen or perhaps a dozen and a half children.

The seats ran along the sides of the bus and sometimes late-boarding children would have to stand. Entry as I recall was through a door at the rear of the bus. These older buses were painted black. There were several designs of newer buses, colored orange or yellow that were larger and more elegant in construction. Children riding these were envied by those consigned to the older buses.

After our family moved out to the Peterson farmstead during the Depression (between my 7th and 8th grade years in junior high) we of course rode the school bus morning and afternoon. The first few years we were on the farm we rated only one of the older buses.

One of the experiences indelibly etched on my memory is one of these older buses getting stuck in a snowdrift about a quarter of a mile or so west of the Peterson farm. The time was late morning — the school day had begun normally but a fast-moving blizzard had caused the school officials to send the buses out early to beat the storm. At least for the bus carrying us the storm moved in too fast. The bus driver at the time was Ernest Anderson who happened to be a brother of the Carl Anderson who at the time was renting the old Woodard place just adjoining the Peterson farm and west of it. Ernest left the bus leaving the children, walked to his brother Carl’s place and Carl drove out with a bobsled to carry us children the rest of the way home. I can recall huddling under some sort of tarp in the bobsled.

Later on we were favored by having one of the newer buses. By present-day standards the buses, particularly the older ones, would be considered grossly unsafe but during the years they were in sue there were no untoward occurrences. Contributing to the absence of incidents was the low speeds the buses operated at (probably they didn’t exceed 35 mph at their highest speed) and the light and slow traffic they encountered in the town of Gowrie and on the rural roads.

The bus driver, in addition to piloting the bus, was the disciplinarian in charge and the children riding were quite aware of it. The threat of being put off the bus to walk (as Mr. McCubbin, one of the drivers of the bus we used once threatened) was enough to quell any juvenile misconduct. In exercising discipline he was certainly confident of being backed up in his actions by the school superintendent and the school board.

During my school days in Gowrie there was no possibility that the school discipline would be challenged by pupils or for that matter by their parents. Indeed most parents exercised a stricter standard than anything imposed by the school authorities. I am reminded of an incident that I heard of secondhand. The senior class in the high school had over the years developed the tradition of a “skip day” late in their last year. Theoretically this was against school policy as an unexcused absence, but its occurrence each year was winked at by the school.

When two children of a local farmer (by name Warner Lanson, who resided a mile north and somewhat west of the Peterson homestead) found out in some way that two of his children (twins) were expecting to participate in this event, he informed the bow twin that he could very well spend the day hauling out manure and he told his wife that if she had trouble keeping the girl twin at work, the girl could join her brother in pitching manure.

Walking to School, and Back

I started first grade in the fall of 1926 when I was six years old. My older sister Clarice had preceded me two years earlier, but she was only about 5-1/2 years of age when she started. Generally children started first grade in the Gowrie school when their parents thought it appropriate — there weren’t the cut-ff rules as to age that usually apply now.

There was no kindergarten class for Clarice and me, nor I believe for my younger sister Vivian who was next in line of the Strand childen. (Vivian had since informed me that she had half-day kindergarten.) Vincent followed Vivian and for a few years there was a kindergarten and he was enrolled in it. He, like Clarice, started school at a relatively early age — he was about 4-1/2 years old when he entered kindergarten. I recall that because of his age he didn’t proceed too well in school and there was some desire on the part of the teacher to “hold him back” for a second year. I guess this was solved in discussion between the teacher and our mother, at any rate he went into the first grade the next year. After Vincent the kindergarten was apparently discontinued, perhaps because the Depression resulted in funding being tight in the county.

The Gowrie Consolidated school was organized sometime in the early 1920s and the red brick building which housed all twelve grades was built in 1923, or perhaps that was the first year it was used. Rural school districts, such as the schools that my father and mother attended for eight years, had the option of voting to enter the consolidated district. Some did, others didn’t. The farming area where the Peterson farm was located voted into the district. My uncle Reuben’s farm was in a township that opted to keep its one-room country schoolhouse and my three Strand cousins (all older than I) had their first eight grades in the Bliss schoolhouse, where their father and my father went to elementary school. I believe my dad taught country school there for a time.

Across the road from my uncle Reuben’s farm was my grandfather Strand’s farm and this area voted to join the Lanyon consolidated district. The Lanyon school was smaller than the Gowrie school, as were several of the other consolidated schools in Webster Country (all probably consolidated at about the same time). My Strand cousins, after finishing country school, had the option of attending Gowrie or Lanyon high school. They chose to go to Gowrie and the youngest, Clifford, was in high school when I was, though of course at a higher grade level.

Note: The Lanyon school after consolidation was considerably smaller than the Gowrie school. After the three small districts of Harcourt, Burnside and Lanyon underwent a further consolidation in the post-WWII era, the Lanyon school, a two-story brick edifice, was abandoned. Some farmer bought it and used it as a barn I believe, a sad end. The town of Lanyon also declined and whether it has totally or mostly disappeared (like Lena, the little stop on the M&StL railroad, not far from my uncle Reuben’s and my grandfather’s farms which now consists only of a few isolated residences). Burnside and Harcourt still exist as small county hamlets.

The Gowrie school was located about two blocks directly south of the “little brown house” which my parents had purchased when I was quite young. So it was an easy walk for us Strand children between home and school. Rather different than had been the case for my parents who faced a walk of a mile or more, each way, on every school day — as was the case for my Strand cousins.

For us we walked first past Nellie Scott’s on the right and Mel Rosene’s on the left, crossed the street, then proceeded in the next full block past the Gowrie city park on the left and Albert and Molly Rosene’s, JET [?] Johnson’s, the pink Stenholm house and Sig Anderson on the right, thence across the principal thoroughfare of the town of Gowrie (the so-called Market Street that ran due east and west) past one more house on the right before reaching the school grounds.

The school day started at 9 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m. with an hour off for lunch. For grades 1 through 6 there was a 15-minute recess period both morning and afternoon. Children living within the Gowrie city limits were generally required to go home for lunch, only those children arrived from rural areas on the various school buses stayed at the school and had their lunch on the school premises. This rule was not rigidly enforced particularly if the weather was inclement. I recall at least one occasion when my sister Clarice and I, observing what seemed to be the start of a cold snowy winter day convinced our mother that we should take a noonday lunch with us. That day we carried our lunch in a couple of little two-quart tin pails that had originally contained either molasses or dark-colored Karo syrup. As it turned out the day turned bright and sunny by noon so I felt a little foolish at having brought my lunch.

For us Strand children, living only a couple of blocks from school, it was rather easy for us to walk home, have lunch and return to school for the start of the afternoon school session at one o’clock. As always we were joined for lunch by my father who walked home at noon from the bank where he worked. For a relative of the family, Harold Renquist (a second cousin of my mother I believe — his grandmother was the “Auntie Callestrom” of my grandmother Peterson — it was a much longer walk at noon since he resided at the far east end of Gowrie, about a mile from the school building, which was near the west end of town But he made the walk home for lunch winter and summer.

My Education

[Today, I begin the transcription of my dad’s account of his education, from first grade on through his adult years. —LS]

I suppose that I can more or less logically divide my formal education into four chronological parts. The first part of course would be the twelve years I spent in the Gowrie Consolidated school, progressing first through the six elementary grades, then the two years in junior high and finishing up with four years of high school. The second section would be the two years I attended junior college in Fort Dodge, followed by the third at the University of Iowa where I spent two school years plus a summer vacation. The fourth is a less well defined period that comprised the years I worked for Shell in San Francisco or Emeryville, during which I took a number of evening classes at UCB [University of California at Berkeley] (all related to chemical engineering) and several company-sponsored classes, mostly on the premises of the Shell installation in Emeryville. An addendum to this fourth section might be the courses I’ve taken at the college here [Southern Oregon University], both for credit and audited only.

Thinking back at these four intervals my impression is that I enjoyed the two junior college years the most, perhaps because of the contacts I had during my attendance with congenial friends. Of the two years I spent at Fort Dodge Junior College the second year evokes the most favorable response in me. I had no immediate goal in mind and was simply using the opportunity to take some classes that might have some value later on should I end up in some four-year engineering curriculum. The first year at the junior college was essentially a full year of engineering credits, the second only very partly so.

Perhaps the second most enjoyable period was the second year at Iowa and the following summer session. Not only had the reaction to being away from the familiar home environment for the first extended time in my life passed, but I had a part-time job at the University power plant that made my financial picture rosier. But I should add that all my school years were generally happy ones with only occasional times of emotional discontent.

Note: Prior to the formation of the Gowrie Consolidated school district the school in Gowrie was housed in a brick, two-story building located on the south side of the main street in the town, about a block and a half east of the city park. In a way it was simply a smaller addition to the newer building that replaced it after the consolidation. It lacked I think a gymnasium. After its use for an educational purpose stopped the building was converted into apartments and known as the Beckwith apartments, after the main who did the conversion. I have a vague mental impression of the man. I don’t think I was ever in the building but I’m not totally sure of this — when I followed Harris Magnusson on his paper delivery route I may have entered the building with him.

My Aunt Laurine was born in 1904, so she would have been 12 or so when the family moved into the house in town in about 1916 or 1917 after my grandfather’s death. I suspect she might have had some of her school years, principally high school, in the old school building.

Near the End

March 2005

It is now about 14 years since my heart attack and surgery. Though I seem to have well out-lived the ten years the surgeon thought I would last after the surgery, I feel sometimes that sooner or later my heart will give out. I am having this feeling that my physical strength is slowly ebbing away — I no longer walk as well or as vigorously as I did only a few years ago. The doctor listens to my heart and is satisfied (I guess) with what he hears. But he ventures no comment

Meanwhile in the past two or three years I have had two strokes that have affected my left side so that my use of my left arm, particularly the hand, is impaired. My walking has also been affected. But I can still walk (as I did today in the halls of the main building here for about half an hour).

Not long ago I was in the pharmacy downtown here in Ashland and changed to encounter “Jimmie” Matoush. She is married to Lyle Matoush and who has had recently a rather incapacitating stroke. He was a member of the art faculty at the local university. She was apparently at the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions, perhaps for Lyle. She asked how I was. I told her my walking was not the same as before. She said rather sadly, at least you can still walk. I guess Lyle cannot anymore. I thought that is true enough but I feel nonetheless that I wish my existence were over.

I am writing this, sitting near the third-floor library in the main building. Jean’s knitting group is in progress and I have absented myself, going on my walk and mow writing this addendum to my life story. My walk is shorter currently. It has been a difficult time for me in the last month or six weeks. First I am convinced I have had several “TIAs” — minor, transient strokes from which recovery is more or less complete. But I feel there is nonetheless an accumulative affect of declining ability to walk, do other physical activity. I feel as though I have no stamina — I do something and then all I want to do is sit and rest.

Then I have had trouble with my back. The sharp discomfort in my upped back has more or less disappeared but this had been followed by a general “achiness” throughout my back. But what bothered me the most, at least on a temporary basis, was the bad cold I had which dragged on for about a month. Currently I feel improved but my prognosis is that I will never recover to where I was before my first stroke. I shall face a slow decline in my physical well being. I am dying, whether there will be a crisis of some sort — another heart attack or a truly debilitating stroke — or whether I shall gradually fae in incompetence remains to be determined.

At this stage in my life I feel the urge to sum up what I have decided about life. It is true that I have earlier summarized my current thinking. But I find that I continually revise and change my previous thoughts, perhaps not decisively at this point, but at least “around the edges” as it were.

Let me begin my current remarks with the observation that I have recently read The End of Faith by Sam Harris and an article of some length in the New Yorker magazine about the life and thinking of Voltaire. Both Voltaire and Harris deal harshly with religion — all religion without exception. What they have to say strikes in me a most responsive note. I am convinced that all religion is an aberration of human thought. Religion has contributed immeasurably to the ills of mankind. And I am including not only such evidences as the Catholic church, the Islamic beliefs, other religions, eastern as well as western, Judaism, but also the softened kind of Christianity found in more “liberal” groups, including the Christianity of my parents and their forebears.

[This is the last entry in the five notebooks my dad wrote under the collective title “Recollections of My Life.” In December 2005, he was hospitalized with pneumonia. Following his discharge, he entered hospice care, and on January 8, 2006, died at home from congestive heart failure. —LRS]