My First School; My First Armistice Day

The year my grandmother Lulu E. Hayes celebrated her eighteenth birthday as well as her wedding day to my grandfather, George Dwight Banister, my elementary school was built; 1895. First of all it is extremely hard to imagine my grandmother at the age of 18, but I have a picture to prove it. Second of all I am amazed that my very first school was fifty four years old and I had just lived five of those years. 

My school was huge. It originally had beautiful turrets and balconies that eventually were destroyed by strong storms. My school was in the plains state of Iowa. Iowa was a frequent victim of strong storms especially in early spring and of course, blizzards and extremely cold temperatures in the winter.

 The people in charge of my school eventually just chopped off that top roof and made it a flat roof, which as we know now is not the best solution for the weight of heavy snow that eventually weakened that roof.

In 1949 the bus picked me up at my driveway very early in the morning which was seven miles away from this beautiful school. A school that I had waited for it seemed like for an eternity. The bus driver's name was Charlie. I will never forget what a kind man he was.

When I got off the bus the teachers were waiting for us on the playground. The school was huge and there were so many children! I was in a group that was to be my kindergarten class. My schoolroom was in the basement. My teacher's name was Miss Peterson. That name sounded a lot like my last name which was Johnson. There were other students whose last name was Peterson and Johnson. I can remember looking out the half windows of my schoolroom. It was a little hard to pay attention to the teacher that first day. Everything was so new and interesting.

School was a fascinating place for me to go five days a week. I couldn't wait to learn how to read and write. I loved to hear the teacher talking. It seemed like every time she said something I learned something new!

The next year I was in first grade. In that grade I learned many things. Some of which were horrifying to me like a teacher spanking a little girl in my class. I can still remember that day in great detail. I also remember my first Veterans Day at Lincoln School only it was called Armistice Day. It was the eleventh month the eleventh day and the eleventh hour.

 My school actually was a high school. The big kids were upstairs and the little kids on two other levels.

On this particular day I had a nickel in my pocket. You have to understand that a nickel in those days was something that I ordinarily never had. This nickel was an entrance fee to go upstairs where the big kids were to watch an Armistice Day movie. If you didn't have a nickel you stayed downstairs and got to listen to stories and color pictures.

As my chubby little legs climbed those cement stairs the edges of them fascinated me. They were shiny silver and slippery on the edges. Little did I know that was probably one of the last years that they were probably safe to use. My beautiful school was demolished in 1965 because it was unsafe.

When we got to the movie room we were told to be very quiet. The room got dark and loud music came on the screen. It was called a news reel that was black and white. It showed men in uniforms with guns and lots of smoke. There was a man's voice that told us what was going on. I didn't like that movie and felt sorry that my daddy had wasted a nickel. I wished that I could give it back. After the movie was over we listened to a man in a uniform that told us that we were very lucky to live in America and that we were free because a lot of men and women fought what I considered to be the bad guys and lots of them died doing that.

Well when I got home from school that day I couldn't wait to tell my mom what had happened at school that day. She sat at our kitchen table and listened to my tale and asked me questions and shook her head and nodded her head as my story continued. When I was exhausted from telling her about the movie I told her I was sorry that I had wasted the nickel. I should have stayed downstairs and colored and listen to stories.

I can remember looking at my mom and asking her how come we were lucky to live where people didn't fight and have guns. She smiled at me and held my little hands and said, "God has a special place for all of us to live. He chose this place for us to live so we need to take good care of it. Some day in Sunday school you will learn about being good stewards.

However, there are some things you need to know and probably won't understand just yet, but in our family we have had lots of soldiers fight for our freedom against "those bad guys" you were talking about. For centuries actually, LuAnne, so take good care of everything they fought for just for us. Honor them and what they stood for.

Happy Veterans Day from a little girl that grew up in Iowa in a small town and went to school in a great big school

I was 6 years old in this photo. I was wearing my very favorite green coat. Oh how I cried when I outgrew it.  By the way the background is the blackboard in my first grade classroom!

The Tinker

 I'm almost seventy-nine years old and had thought that I had written down all of my memories of being raised on the farm in the forties and fifties, but I was wrong. The other day the word "tinker" came to mind as I was watching my husband fiddling with something to get it to work the other day. Then I could see him plain as day; the tinker that would visit the farm hoping for some business from my mother to fix her pots pans, or the wash basins. The one I remember the most sat out on the front porch. My father or my grandfather had put together some boards to make a stand to hold the wash basin and some homemade soap that either my grandmother or my mother had made and was big enough for some old linen towels to dry off with.

There was a plank underneath that served only to make the top steady. That's what I am guessing because I don't remember that it served any other purpose. My mother would fill the wash basin with water from the well in the morning and the heat of the sun would warm it so that my father and any other of the neighbors could "scrub up" before coming in the house to eat an enormous meal that my mother had prepared. The wash basin table was on the front porch, however, the men would go to the pump and again rinse off before coming in to eat the huge thresher or baling meals my mother cooked so well. Their wet arms were of course, dried off on their overalls.

If my mother had a job for him, the tinker would get out his clay or mud in my imagination and put it on the outside of the basin where the porcelain was gone. I can remember thinking that it wasn't a very good fix.( I was probably five or six years old.) Then he would get out some kind of tool ( I now know it was a soldering gun) and put a shiny metal on the inside to fill the hole. After that metal cooled he would take his gloved hand and rub off the mud and would say, "There you go madam. That will be twenty-five cents." I can also remember her going to her little cloth change purse. It was black satin with frayed threads held together with a gold clasp. She would sort through the coins to get him his money. He would thank her and be on his way. It seemed that every time he would stop to repair something there would be a discussion between my mother and father if it was really necessary to spend money on a tinker. The idea of buying a new basin was out of the question. As I'm writing this I can remember my father's solution one time when the basin again needed repair. He was so proud as he showed my mother his handy work. He had put a washer and screw in the hole and ground it off smooth on the outside. I remember my mother telling him that that was the last time the basin would be repaired. With a warning to be careful when he washed his hands not to scrape his knuckles on the screw head on the inside of the basin.

As I was smiling to myself with my old old memories "tinker" brought up another memory We had tinker toys to play with! We would sit for hours and build houses and even people with our tinker toys.

One fun little anecdote about a tinker and his work the phrase "not worth a tinker's dam" is because of the mud like stuff the tinker would put on the outside of a pot then would discard after the solder had cooled because it was worth nothing. How many times I have heard that and never put the old tinker together with how he did his work for my mom and many others along his route.