Friday NIght Basketball

I have written a little already about the athletic program at Gowrie. Though I never “went out for a team” I did attend the basketball games which were held in the local gym. Somehow or ther I had a season ticket I believe. The games were invariably on Friday evenings and were usually preceded by a pep rally on the last period of the day on Friday. As I recall I was rather emotionally involved early in high school but this attitude had tended to fade by the time I was a senior.

On occasion I attended games away from Gowrie. My friend John Woodard was permitted to drive the Model A Ford belonging to Well Lines, his uncle, to a few such games and I rode along. There was also the time John and I rode along with Darwin Liljegren to one of these out-of-town games. Darwin had taken the car his father, a rural mail carrier, had and when we were to start home the car wouldn’t start. I think a relative came to get us, but we were brought back only as far as where Darwin then resided, which was in the old Amanda Gorman house next to my grandmother’s house. 

John and I were left on our own as to how we would get home. It was suggested that we wake up my uncle Carl and have him drive us home but I mentally vetoed this idea. I wasn’t about to meet his reaction to such a situation. Instead John and I walked the four miles home — it wasn’t a hard walk. The night though cool wasn’t cold. I suppose we got home sometime in the early hours of the morning.

Career Guidance

The school staff included no counselor to guide students in choosing a career, but I recall Mr. Millard in one of his classes talking a bit about various careers. As I recall he handed out a little pamphlet that listed potential incomes in various professions and engineering was indicated as having a top potential of about $50,000/year. I never achieved that in all the years I was at Shell. About the closest was the $35,000 I earned in 1975 when I worked part-time for Shell as a “consultant.” Perhaps that was the first “push” toward engineering as a career for me.

Although Gowrie high school did not include chemistry in the curriculum, somehow or other I had developed an interest in the subject. Perhaps I mentioned it to the superintendent (A.C. Anderson, who succeeded Leistra) and he gave me a couple of demo textbooks that he, as superintendent, had received from textbook vendors. One was in physics and the other chemistry. I think I read portions of the chemistry text so I had an idea of what it was about when I enrolled in junior college.

There was one incident that may have steered me in the direction of engineering. One evening, when we were still in the little brown house, I was at one of the summer band concerts. Somehow or other I became aware of, or possibly was introduced to, a cousin of Robert Blomgren (a year ahead of me in school but with whom I played on occasion — he lived in a house not far from us — actually when we children carried milk to Aunt Hulda and gradfather Strand we walked through their yard). I was impressed by this cousin (by name Jack Sederholm) who was described as being an engineer. Robert followed his cousin’s example and ended up as an engineer.

High School Recollections

At the time I was a freshman in Gowrie there was a hazing process that the freshmen had to undergo at the hands of the sophomore class. I really don’t know if there was compulsion involved but everyone went through it, perhaps for reasons of peer pressure. The process was tacitly permitted by the school administrations, at least it was held in the school gymnasium. I don’t recall all the details but there was a gauntlet that the freshmen had to run, past sophomores equipped with wooden paddles. How long this practice lasted I don’t know — I have no recollection of attending it as a sophomore to get my licks in.

I have only a single recollection that comes to mind of my sophomore year. The Des Moines newspaper sponsored an essay content open to high school students. How this came to my attention I don’t know but I entered, perhaps Miss Amlie suggested it. The topic I chose was “Immunization” and somewhere in my collection of trivia I believe I have a pencil draft. I won third prize which was $5. I think a girl in Clarice’s class, Ruth Fridell, also entered and received Honorable Mention.

My father cashed my check, giving me at my request five silver dollars. I remember keeping them for some time. At this time, though my dad was by then working at the treasurer’s office in Fort Dodge, the family was still operating on a financial shoestring. So when my mother broke her glasses and was faced with the cost of a new lens, she broke down and cried. I was moved to offer her my five silver dollars to help defray the cost. She refused the offer, but I think she was somewhat heartened.

It was in my junior year that I took five subjects instead of the usual four. This was a prerogative normally reserved for senior, why I did it as a junior I can’t remember. I thibnk I took all the classes offered in the high school curriculum with the exception of home economics and the agriculture classes. The ag classes were taken only by a few boys, who had the intention of being farmers, but they would have been of interest to me although my expected career at that time was far from being clear in muy mind. However, the ag classes occupied 1-1/2 periods and conflicted with classes of more pertinence and interest to me so I didn’t attempt to take them.

Academic Testing

At the time I was in high school, Gowrie participated in an Every-Pupil Testing program which was developed and run by a department at the University of Iowa. Actually the idea and program were the work of an individual, Everett Lindquist, who was born and grew up in Gowrie. The first part of the program was carried out in individual schools, and students having a certain level of achievement at this level were invited to come to Iowa City for more advanced tests.

As a freshman I was selected to go to Iowa City in General Science. I can remember being driven down to Iowa City by Mr. Millard along with another member of the General Science class, Richard Swanson. I don’t recall any other students along. I was also chosen for the trip in each of the three subsequent years of high school. I went in both American and European history, in Latin I and II and in Physics and perhaps one other subject that I can’t identify at the moment.

I never received a first or second recognition at SUI, although I was third or fourth in a couple of cases. A couple of the years I went, my acquaintance Howard Nelson (a year ahead of me in school) also went and he had a couple of “firsts” as I recall. At the conclusion of the tests at Iowa City there was a banquet at the Memorial Union at which the winning students were recognized.

These trips to Iowa City gave me a little touch of the campus there so when I went there after my two years at Fort Dodge Junior College it wasn’t a completely strange scene. We stayed at the Quadrangle dormitory, where I roomed part of the time I was a student at SUI, had meals there and on one occasion, saw a performance of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” at McBride Hall. I was entranced by the performance which was far and beyond any theatrical event I had witnessed up to that time.

By the time I went to Iowa City as a student the Fine Arts Building had been constructed across the river from the Memorial Union and that was where the university plays were staged — a much more elegant place than McBride Auditorium. I recall seeing some plays there but I don’t remember them the way I do of that Wilde play. Probably because of the novelty of it then.

I have the vague recollection that my older sister Clarice may have been along on one of the times I went to Iowa City. One year Vivian went in four subjects, perhaps when I was a senior and she was a sophomore. She recalls going but Vincent does not.

At some time the event at Iowa City was abandoned although I believe the rest of the program continued. One reason for this was that some schools had turned the tests into sort of a competition, with special coaching which tended to negate the factor of individual progress. Not long ago (1996–97) there was an article in “The Spectator,” the SUI publication about university news and matters describing the program, its initiator and its current state.

Manual Training Class

I find that the class as a freshman that I remember best is manual training, perhaps the variety of things we did led to this greater recollection. Wood-working projects probably occupied more time than any of the other topics covered and amongst these I did were an oak table, a short bookshelf that could sit on a desk etc., several rubber guns, and a toolbox. I also adapted some black walnut wood that I got from an old sewing machine of my grandmother Peterson, which I ran across in the loft of the old granary.

Black walnut box

The oak table ended up with a non-oak top as I was never able to get the flat oak boards I had planned to use to fit smoothly. As I recall it was gum wood. All the wood-working in the class was with manual tools — there were no machine-powered items, such as saws, planes, lathes etc. A far cry from the shop at the high school here in Ashland, where I took some evening classes. Here there was virtually every powered wood-working tool. What happened to this table I have no idea.

The small bookshelf I retrieved at some time from my parents’ home. It had suffered in the years since it was made and I repaired and refinished it. I think one of our daughters now has it, from the down-sizing we did on moving to Mountain View Retirement Residence. The rubber guns are gone, we had them when I and the Woodard boys plated the game, using as missiles rubber sections cut form old inner tubes. A game that I daresay is no longer in the repertoire of schoolboys.

Bookends

The toolbox I also retrieved and it now serves as a place where I keep nails, screws, etc. It is substantially as I completed it in manual training but I did add a couple of finishing touches that I omitted then. When I found it one when when I was visiting my parents in Gowrie — it was in the old hay loft in the small barn at the rear of the property — it contained a few remnants of the toy farm machines that I and my brothers had made and played with during the early years on the Peterson farm. 

Toolbox exterior

Toolbox interior

Wooden toys

I think it was I who made most of this machinery, using some hand woodworking tools that my father got at the Johnson lumberyard. I recall I kept them in an old cabinet in a small room off the back hall of the house. My father had apparently picked up the few remaining pieces when my parents moved back to the little brown house after WWII ended; probably for sentimental reasons. At the peak of the toy farm activity we had tractors, plows, harrows and an assortment of buildings. For me I think it represented an underlying liking for farming as an activity and a potential livelihood.

Other areas of instruction in farm shop were learning of various knots and rope splicing, harness repair, working on small gas engines, tool sharpening. Most of the tying of knots has left me except for the simple square knot and perhaps the bowline. The rope splicing involved both “short” and “long” splices. At my grandmother’s house the dumb-waiter was operated by a long continuous rope loop that could be pulled to raise or lower it. My uncle Carl had made the long splice in this rope and one he challenged me to detect where the spice was. From my experience in manual training I knew what to look for and I think he was a bit nonplused when I pointed out where the splice was.

Harness repair involved sewing the leather pieces together. When this subject came up in farm shop I visualized it as the simple use of riveting that Uncle Carl always used in repairing the old harness still in use on the farm. A sort of makeshift kind of repair typical of my uncle. I don’t think I actually repaired any of the harness in use on the farm. Much of it was beyond repair through neglect over the years. What remained in use was the better items (such as the harness used when driving to town etc.) but even this was in pretty sad shape

Some of the members of the class brought in some small gas engines to work on but I had none to furnish so my part in this aspect of farm shop was minimal. I can remember them sitting outside the back side of the shop room.

Tool sharpening involved saw filing, and sharpening of plan and auger bits. Over the years I have sharpened my saws occasionally but in recent years I have hired it done.

Toward the end of the school year there was a manual training competition sponsored by Iowa State College. Mr. Millard chose three members from the class to represent the Gowrie school — Vernon Telleen, Dale Coffin and myself. I’m not sure why I was selected as I didn’t consider myself one of the more competent members of the class.

One item in the test at Iowa State had not been covered in the instruction we had in Gowrie — namely the preparation and placement of concrete. So Mr. Millard gave us some oral instructions but no actual experience. The test item on this was to make a form for a home plate, and to mix, place, and finish the concrete to fill it. One criterion to be met was to prepared enough concrete but only with a small excess. My vague recollection is that Vernon, Dale and I had to “fudge” a bit at the end to have enough concrete. Despite our lack of experience in concrete preparation we received a good rating on the overall test. Somewhere I think I still have the little certificate we received.

Beginning High School

So the next fall I moved upstairs in the school building to high school. All the classes had desks in the assembly hall which was in the central part of the building. Desks faced toward the south as in the junior high assembly hall and the desks were the same fixed kind. There was a blackboard at the front of the hall in front of which there was a raised dais on which was a desk at which a member of the faculty customarily sat as a monitor of the room. The windows along the front of the school building were on the left. I have a vague feeling that there was an American flag in the front of the hall, and perhaps an Iowa flag. At the rear of the room was a couple of tables and bookshelves with encyclopedias in them.

The assembly hall had two main entrances one at each end, leading from the central hall at each end at the top of the stairs up from the floor below. It could also be entered from the cloak room for the boys which was at the head of the stairs to the south of the hall. The cloak room also had a door to the central hall. Along the inside of the building along the inner wall of the assembly were the library and a classroom. These were lighted by the windows on the back side of the building.

The central hall at the south end of the assembly had on its east side the restroom for the boys, the water fountains and at the end on the corner a classroom, usually used for English, Latin and the like. At the south end of the hall was the principal’s office.

On the side next the rear of the building was the physics and general science classroom, which was also used for such classes as American Problems (a senior class). The room was equipped with some laboratory tables at the rear and the front had a table that had a sink etc. for use in demonstrating experiments. These were never used in either the Physics or General Science classes, certainly a drawback in the level of instruction — so my first experience with any kind of laboratory work was when I entered Junior College in Fort Dodge.

Behind this classroom was a room where the agriculture classes met, and doubled as the office for Mr. Millard who taught them.

Along the central hall, at the rear of the assembly were, on the front of the building, the steps leading up, next to the stairway was the girls’ restroom and the water fountains. On the rear [near?] side of the hall were several classrooms and at the end the girls’ cloakroom and a room which was used for music instruction. During the time I was in high school there was no instrumental music either orchestral or band. My three brothers all had the opportunity of playing in the school band, but I think Vivian missed out on this.

Music instruction for me was limited to participation in the glee club — which as I recall I started but soon dropped. This was for me limited to the time I was a freshman. I recall Miss Hungerford, the music teacher, seeing me in the assembly hall after I had ceasing coming remonstrating with me but she failed to elicit a response from me to return.

In connection with this account of my school experiences in Gowrie I prepared a sketch of what I remembered of the interior of the school building to be. I showed this preliminary sketch to my sister Vivian and she responded with a couple of corrections that I have incorporated in the drawings shown earlier. Amongst the corrections were the inclusion of a short flight of stairs next to the ascending stairs from the main floor to the high school level. At the south stairway these led to a room where students who became ill during school could retire and rest (country pupils could not for example go home as those living in town could). Vivian remembers that when Vincent broke his leg on the school ground (during noon-time play) he was taken to this room and she recalls seeing him there. I believe this incident occurred after our move to the Peterson farm but I’m not sure. At the north entrance stairs the short flight led to the music teacher’s office.

Eight Grade Theatrical

Toward the end of each year the eighth grade put on an amateur theatrical production and I was selected for one of the minor parts. My one chance to perform as an actor was not to be as I had my attach of appendicitis and missed the last couple of weeks of school. This was a critical juncture in my life and for awhile it would be touch and go whether I would survive or not. But I did after the few critical days about four days after the operation. As for completing the eighth grade schoolwork there was no problem (I was excused from the end-of-the-term semester tests as I had been for since the time this exemption was available to me) and I was promoted to being a freshman in high school.

Although I liked not having to take the semester tests (I still needed to take the intermediate six weeks tests I feel now that this was somewhat of a disservice to me as the experience would have been useful in preparing me for the exams I faced in college. Not long ago I was looking through the material I have saved from my Gowrie school days and I find I still have the playbook for the production I missed.

In high school the junior and senior classes each had a play that they produced but I never tried out for these. If nothing else the difficulty in arranging to attend evening practices mitigated against my participating as by that time we had moved out to the Peterson farm.

[I’m not sure that my dad is remembering this accurately. In his papers, I found a script for a play called “Spring Fever” by Glenn Hughes. The copyright date is 1937, the year my dad turned 17. If this is the play he is referring to here, he could not have been part of the cast when he was in eighth grade. On some of the front pages are inscriptions by some of the cast members. None are addressed to my dad by name, but they are clearly addressed to the individual who played Professor Virgil Bean. — LRS]

Spelling and Math

Iowa at the time I was in junior high had a state spelling bee. Participants in the statewide event were the county champions which in turn were selected from the best spellers from the individual schools in the county. I don’t have any recollection of the local spelling bee in seventh grade but I do from eighth grade.

Mrs. Knapp, the principal, was eager for me to participate, and since spelling was one of the subjects I had always done well in throughout the elementary grades I went along with her desires. The whole process was sort of promoted by the Des Moines Register/Tribune newspaper and I recall studying the long array of words they published which I suppose had been used in previous years.

Anyway, came the day when the class bee was held, and somewhere along toward the end I misspelled a word and Mrs. Knapp was shocked at my failure to live up to her expectations. Somehow or other I think the word I missed was a fairly easy one — accommodation — and my error was to leave out one m.

That year the entrant from the Gowrie school was Annabelle Strough, who often sat ahead of or behind me after the seating became determined alphabetically. My main recollection of Annabelle is that she tended fo arrive for the school opening, either in the morning or after the noon hour, one or two minutes before the appointed time, often somewhat breathless. She had an older brother, Carleton, who went by the nickname “Turkey” — an individual with an aura of being a juvenile roughneck. I last saw Annabelle at our 50th class reunion in 1988 — I daresay I hadn’t seen her once since graduation day.

Vivian was more successful than I in the spelling bee. She won locally but I can’t remember how she fared in Fort Dodge at the county bee.

Toward the end of the year, Mrs. Knapp gave me some work in arithmetic which was really a forerunner of what I would encounter the next year in freshman algebra. I was entranced by the new concepts. I still remember where I was sitting when I had this experience — it was in the end seat in the desk row next the windows, not my customary seat.

I would say that if I have one reservation about the education instruction at Gowrie it was that new and interesting concepts weren’t introduced as soon as they might have — that and the lack of science classes such as chemistry and biology. However, expanding the curriculum to include there wasn’t feasible for the size of school Gowrie was.

Seventh and Eighth Grades

Junior high in Gowrie at the time of my schooling consisted of seventh and eighth grades and the two grades were together in the assembly hall which was on the same floor as grades 1–6. In the assembly hall, the seventh grade was seated furthest from the windows, the eighth grade next to them. Where I sat as a seventh grader I don’t now recall. In eighth grade I was about midway in the row of seats next the windows.

The hall was about midway in the front side of the building and had behind it a classroom and in front of it the superintendent’s office. The desks, which were non-movable, faced south so we had the windows on our left. The room had the ubiquitous blackboard on the front wall facing the students and I seem to remember there was a blackboard also son the side opposite the windows.

The classroom behind the assembly hall the desks were movable and of the type found in many college classrooms of the time — that is the desks were entered from the left side and on the right was a small writing surface. This classroom was entered by a door from the assembly hall at the end next the central hall of the building. There may have also been a door to the hall (the assembly hall had two doors, at the front and back of the room). As in the assembly hall the desks faced south, looking at the blackboard ahead of them, but the rows were parallel to the blackboard instead of perpendicular. The room had windows on the left (on the front side of the building) was was relatively narrow When one grade was having a class session in the assembly hall the other would be in this auxiliary classroom.

There were two teachers assigned to junior high. In seventh grade the principal was Lucille Hayes and her associated was Mary Wood. Miss Hayes was a longtime, no-nonsense teacher, who had one outstanding characteristic — the ability to snap her fingers with a louder crack than any other teacherm or individual, I have ever met. This was useful in her maintenance of pupil discipline, for which she was noted. She left teaching the following year to marry a local farmer, Clarence Norberg. He was a farmer somewhat north of the Peterson farm but exactly where I never knew. I believe she died a few years back, somewhere I heard of or read her obituary.

Miss Wood on the other hand was a relatively new teacher, one of the many who taught a year or two in the Gowrie school and then moved on. Where Miss Hayes had a face to match her reputation for discipline Miss Wood was a pretty, nubile creature. She too was gone the next year,

For eighth grade, the principal was Mrs. Knapp, a window, who was certainly am earnest, well-intentioned teacher. She had a child I believe and from her appearance I’d guess she was past the age of 30. Miss Hayes was noted for the way she could snap her fingers; Mrs. Knapp’s distinguishing characteristic (for me at least) was her practice of carrying the pencil she always had with her stuck into her array of rather bushy, fluffy hair.

Although I do not fault Mrs. Knapp for her teaching capability, she was not the equal of her associate, Margaret Nagel. Miss Nagel was in my estimation the best instructor I had in the elementary grades. She was a rather tall individual of husky build, not particularly prepossessing of physical mien or structure but with a strong personality that showed in her teaching technique.

As for grades 1–6, I have a few memories, inconsequential of themselves, that have stayed with me. Why I have these particular memories I am at a loss to say and why they were remembered and others not is a mystery to me. My one memory of the classroom behind the assembly hall was the time the teacher (Miss Nagel?) was querying the class on the assigned reading and the question was the identity of a crop being grown in some region. The answer was “yam” and the class, including me, failed to come up with an answer until Richard Swanson, the sole offspring of the local florist, responded with it.

Richard’s father was I believe partly incapacitated, perhaps because of a WWI injury. Anyway he and his wife operated the one and only greenhouse in Gowrie, partly as a sideline I think — I believe the mainstay of their income was from farm property. Richard had many of the toys I wanted, but I can’t say I was ever envious of him. Generally he was a moderately good student — when we were freshmen in high school he qualified for the trip to Iowa City in the every [sic] pupil testing program. I can remember the trip down to Iowa City in Mr. Millard’s car with him. I don’t think he ever continued on to college, just went into the florist business. He was a cousin of the Dale Hauser that led me astray in second grade.

Another recollection from junior high is related to the music instruction. All during the elementary grades we had periods of vocal music, provided by the music teacher. For part of this time the teacher was a Miss Berg, who happened to be a sister of the high school coach, Lester (?) Berg. However in junior high there was a replacement for her, name not remembered.

One time in eighth grade this new teacher had a group of boys up at the front of the assembly hall having us perform. Somehow or other, perhaps because my voice was changing I tried singing in a high tenor voice. The teacher noticed this and singled me out for attention to my discomfiture. Anyway it dampened my interest in singing and though I participated for awhile in the boys’ glee club in my freshman year in high school, I drifted out of the activity. Perhaps had I persevered I could sing better than I now do, which is with a quite limited range.

Sixth Grade, the County Tests, and John Woodard

Eva Arndt was my sixth grade teacher and physically she was similar to Miss Rice of my first grade experience — rather thin and perhaps a bit above average in height.

As in grades 3, 4, and 5 the students faced the blackboard on the north wall, with the windows on the left side on the west. I sat near the back in the row of desks nearest the inner wall. Adjacent to me, front of back I really don’t remember, was Lawrence Larson. He was a country boy and his father had died and his mother had remarried so be lived as a stepchild in part. From his comments I sensed that his mother’s second marriage was a comedown from her first. His father may have been a veteran of WWI and it seemed that his mother had some income from a pension, perhaps disability.

During the time I was in the elementary grade, country children were allowed an absence of two weeks each fall during corn-picking to aid in the harvest. Lawrence had to help his father in this respect, and I think he mildly resented being taken out of school. I only remember him in sixth grade, perhaps his father was a tenant farmer and was in the Gowrie district only the one year.

At the time I was in sixth grade, and actually extending into the years we were on the Peterson farm, corn-picking was in the transition from being a hand operation to a mechanical one. My Uncle Carl had had a mechanical picker (two-row mounted on his Farmall tractor) for some time before we moved to the farm and during the time we were on the farm I was exposed to manual corn-picking only the year when the wind had blown so many ears off the stalks that mechanical picking would miss too many ears. That was the year my cousin Leonard helped my uncle with corn-picking. During the years we were on the farm most of the neighboring farmers were still picking corn by hand. One winter my father picked corn for one of them and used what he earned to pay his church pledge for the year — a commitment that few people would have made.

Another memory I have of sixth grade is when Miss Arndt thought one of my English compositions was worthy of note. Whether she read it to the class or I did I can’t remember.

In sixth grade we had the first of the so-called county tests, the test in this case being in geography. I’m not sure why we took this test at that time as I not geography listed as a subject on one of my junior high report cards. These tests, administered by the county board of education, were the official criterion of whether the material in the first eight grades had been satisfactorily mastered. They were a carryover from the days of country schools when some uniform standard of achievement was in order. How long they continued to be used in the Gowrie school I don’t know but I took the full complement of them by the time I finished eight grade.

I have a few copies of these tests administered around the turn of the century (they were in some papers my Uncle Carl had saved) and I would have been hard-pressed to pass them when I was in school to say nothing of the present. I’d venture to say that few students leaving elementary grades nowadays could pass them. For all that country schools suffered from physical limitations and in teacher attention, the education provided certainly could be favorably compared to that currently given. Somewhere I heard, perhaps secondhand that my cousin Clifford who went to country school once commented that the instruction he received well equipped him to pass the county tests

An interesting case developed relative to the county tests for my classmate John Woodard. When we knew the Woodard boys (three of them) their parents had both died and their aunt, Annie Lines, who lived across the road from us when we were in the Peterson farmhouse, was providing a home for them. Actually I had known John a little when they, and we, were living in Gowrie; that was before their mother died — their father had been already dead for some time.

The house that Annie and Will, her husband, had was rather small, but the two of them, the three Woodard children, and old A.B. Woodard, the boys’ grandfather, made out in it.

John was a year older than I which meant that since he was in my grade in junior high he had been retained once to repeat a grade. John had apparently passed all the county tests and, by the rules, was certifiably in completion of the elementary grades. But Mrs. Knapp the junior high principal was of the opinion he should be kept back for a second year in eighth grade. Annie was incensed by this and proceeded to raise a fuss, the outcome of which was that John was allowed to start high school with my class.

I looked at my eight-grade report recently and the promotion, usually signed by the teacher, was in this case by direction of the Board of Education. There had been an erasure, presumable of Mrs. Knapp’s signature and the new phrase put in. Though John wasn’t a really good student he proceeded through high school all right and went to Fort Dodge Junior College at least one year, the first year I attended there. After that I think he drifted off to live with a half-sister in Michigan and I think I only saw him once more. After WWII he came driving out to California and I saw him when I was living in Berkeley. He didn’t “like” California and turner around and went back east after a brief stay.

Fifth Grade

Fifth grade was where I had Miss Loe — short, round-faced and I think newly graduated from Iowa State Teachers or a similar school. I have the vague feeling that she was at Gowrie for only one year. For some reason I had a mild dislike of her. When I was in fifth grade my Aunt Lillian taught sixth grade for one year (it was the year before her marriage and I think she wanted to be at “home” during the preparatory period — for several years previously she had taught in nearby Dayton) and when I expressed my feelings about Miss Loe, she said she thought Miss Loe was an earnest, well-intentioned teacher.

In this class the pupils faced north, as in third and fourth grades and my seat was midway in the row next [to] the west windows. In from of me sat Marian Hunt, who was part American Indian in ancestry, her father being white. Marian was a rather thin waif-like child with the black hair and dark coloring of her mother. She was very shy, and never seemed to smile. Like Bill Jones there was this unbathed aura about her which I disliked. She was a moderately good student but her shyness probably affected her work. She was in my class only the one year. In retrospect I have a feeling of sorrow for her, sort of an alien in a strange culture.

Once my mother sent me down to the Leader store during the non hour some some grocery item and while I was there Marian came in. I think she and her parents lived in the Munday Hotel, just across the street to the north from the Leader store. The Munday Hotel wasn’t really a hotel anymore, as it had been at some time in the past when people visiting Gowrie such as traveling salesmen came and went by train and used it for overnight stays. It had become apartments and in one of these the Hunt family resided. Marian had a nickel and her mother had instructed her to spent it doe some item, I don’t really recall what. Either the item wasn’t available or she didn’t have enough money. Anyway, she stood there in a shy and painful quandary and I felt a pang of sorrow for her. Maybe she was afraid to carry news of the situation back to her mother.

Miss Loe in her effort to develop a sense of citizenship and responsibility in her pupils had instituted the practice of having a little chart on the wall, not far from the entrance to the room, in which merits and demerits for each pupil were recorded. What these items were I don’t remember but I’m sure demerits were for some kind of anti-social or disruptive conduct in the class.

On one occasion Harris Magnusson and I were in the room after school for some reason and Miss Loe left for some reason. Harris had some demerits listed which he felt were unfair or unjustified and since they were recorded in pencil he talk me into erasing one or two. When Miss Loe returned her antenna must have sensed that we had been misbehaving in some way but since she didn’t know in what was she said nothing. But I have the vague recollection that next day there were demerit marks added for both Harris and me.

Harris had a paper route and I often accompanied him on Saturdays when he made the rounds of his route collecting the weekly change. So I spent quite a bit of my spare time with him, enjoyably, but I don’t think he was always a proper little boy as he might have been.