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.