Submitted by Ray Evans
I attended grade school at the Oak Hill School located about 5 miles
from Brodhead in western Rockcastle county from 1934 through 1942..
Following are some of the things I remember about attending school there.
My first teacher was Hundley Rigsby ( 1906-1936) He spanked one of the
older boys with a wooden paddle when I was in the first grade. That scared
the daylights out of me. I was as meek as a lamb from then on.
Initially Oak Hill was a one-room school house. About 1937, an extra
room was added and it became a two-room school. The new addition had a
rather tall foundation. The floor was about 2 feet off the ground.
Consequently, it was dry year round. It was an ideal place to talk to the
DOODLE BUGS. There was always several of those little cone shaped
indentations in the dry soil. As I recall the chat was: “Doodle bug
come out, come out your house is on fire”. Over-and-over. You could
watch the dry dirt moving around. I don’t remember if I ever actually
saw a doodle bug. I wonder if children ever call for doodle bugs today.
As I remember, It was fairly regimented in the beginning. For example;
following recesses and lunch periods we formed two columns of students with
the boys in one column and the girls in another prior to entering the school
building. Also at the end of the school days we were instructed to
straighten our desks and when finished we were to sit with both hands
together on top of the desk. I often wonder if school children do that
today. Another convention we had was: If there was not a school book laying
in the doorway, you could hold your hand up and be excused to go to the
toilet. There were two of those typical outhouses with a path -- one for the
boys and one for the girls.
The floor of the classroom was made of tongue and groove pine boards
and they were kept oiled with a dirty black oil in order to minimize dust. A
blackboard was located at the front of the room that extended almost the
entire width of the room. Of course there was one of those map cases
positioned above the blackboard. There was a lot of strange looking maps
that could be selected from the case. The maps uncoiled much like a spring
loaded window shade. The teacher would pull down whichever map was desired
and they never seemed to want wind back up.
Water was obtained from a well with one of those long narrow buckets
that was lowered into the well with a rope and pulled back out with a bucket
of water. The well bucket had a valve arrangement at the bottom so once it
was retrieved from the well the bucket full of water could be allowed to
drain into a conventional water bucket. Since the school building and well
were on a rather high ridge, the well seemed to be awfully deep. Water was
kept in the schoolroom in a galvanized water bucket with a common dipper. In
order to get a drink, we fashioned a drinking cup out of a sheet paper and
folded it a couple of times to form a drinking cup. Its no wonder we learned
to make paper airplanes.
Recess and lunchtime were the most fun. We played all kind of different
games To name a few; Jump Rope, Ring around the Rosy, Under the Mulberry
Bush, Ante-over, Mumbley Peg, Marbles and Hopscotch, (Many years after grade
school when I was walking down a street in Seoul, Korea, I came across some
Korean children playing hopscotch. To their amazement and giggles I jumped
through their hopscotch diagram) We also played stick ball with a sponge
rubber ball. Whenever some wise-guy hit the ball into the bushes, we spent
quite a bit of time hunting for the ball. In the wintertime, after a big
snow we always fixed a skating place by packing snow and adding a little
water to form a thick layer of ice. We would form a line and get a running
start and slide (skate) standing up across the ice. As I recall our parents
never liked the wear and tear on our shoes.
We spent a lot of time at home memorizing some kind of poem so we could
recite it in front of the class. Except for possibly improving presentation
skills, I’ve never figured out the value of memorizing a poem. Of
course I still remember a few lines from Kipling’s “If.”
Sometimes on Friday afternoons we would have a ‘program’
where we would provide ourselves with some form of entertainment. I recently
made contact with Georgia Marie Lewis Esch who played the guitar and sang at
one of those ‘programs’. She made a big impression on me with her
ability to play the guitar.
Almost every year, Jack Hysinger would visit the school and tell some
stories. He had a mouth full of gold teeth that sparkled like new money when
he talked and he always rode a beautiful saddle horse. The thing I remember
most about him though was that he always gave each child in the class a new
nickel. Undoubtedly, the nickel was spent on a candy bar or some other
foolishness. What would I give today for one of those nickels?.
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