Back To School

Before I relate what it was like on the first day of a school year, I will explain how and why I may be referring to different types of schools in my blogs. My family lived on the edge of a small village, and I went to a two room school (grades 1 – 5 in one room, I think). After my first grade, they had built another school with an additional two rooms, and then from there they kept expanding. So as I progressed in Grades, there were more class rooms. But, I would also end up going to school from my Grandfathers home (which was 12 miles north of where I lived). This was a one room country school with grades 1 to 12 and had a barn for our horses. Also, for some reason I was ‘farmed’ out a lot when growing up and would stay with families on farms for weeks on end and would take a school bus to school. These are the reasons that in one blog I may talk about walking to school, another on the bus or on horse back. Now, that I have completely confused you! In September, when we went to school on the first day – we were not given a list of supplies that we had to buy. The teacher would have everything that we needed, pencils, crayons, work books, paper, rulers, straight pens and ink (although early versions were available we were not allowed to use ball point pens). The teacher would also give us all the text books that we would need for the year. To my knowledge no parent paid for any of these supplies. It was part of what people got for their taxes in those days. Rather than use the straight pens provided, you could use a fountain pen*, but it was your responsibility to buy it. Not having to purchase any of the school supplies had many advantages besides not costing anything. Regardless of a student’s ability (or not) to purchase ‘neat’ pencil boxes, binders, etc. – everyone had the same. This procedure also did not cause any of the turmoil and stress that I witnessed in some of the Office Supply stores at the start of this school year. Mind you, if you lost something or needed more supplies during the year, the teacher would usually put you through the 3rd degree and lecture you on the evils of chewing on your eraser, or breaking your pencil. At a later time I will write about how the black boards were actually black, the sometimes “adventure” of being the pupil who got to mix the ink powder with water, why the schools always had the smell of oil - unless there was the wonderful smell of hot soup or hot chocolate and why there was a need for three and four holer outhouses!

• A fountain pen carried a supply of ink in a reservoir, which was a rubber, sac-like container inside the pen’s barrel. On the side of the pen’s barrel is a lever. When you pull out on the lever, its other end pushes inside the pen and presses against the sac. This forces out the air from the empty sac. Then when you place the tip, or nib, of the pen into a bottle of ink and release the lever, the ink is drawn up through tiny tubes into the sac. This is called the vacuum method, since the vacuum inside the sac draws up the ink.