“School days remind Grace of her ‘good old golden rule’ days” from the September 27, 1979 Door County Advocate
Grace Samuelson’s first grade class in the primary room of what is now the junior high. The picture is dated Oct. 4, 1909, with Grace in the second desk from front in the middle; an X marks the spot. Miss Jenkins is the teacher.
School days remind Grace of her ‘good old golden rule’ days
By Grace Samuelson
I was picking off the dead leaves from the window boxes when three youngsters went by on their way to the first day of school. They held their notebook covers and tablets under their arms and walked expectantly along, nodding and smiling at me as I inanely asked: “First day of school?”
My thoughts went back to my own first days: how differently we dressed and looked. When I started school in Miss Jenkins’ Primary room, my two older sisters walked me to school. Checked gingham dresses, Verna’s and mine blue, Vera’s pink. We each carried a bouquet of golden glow for our teachers: the girls had tablets and pencils. I had a brand new slate and slate pencil with a tiny sponge tied to the corner so I could wash off the old and write the new letters I learned.
Miss Jenkins was very old. I thought she had been my father’s teacher too, when he was a boy in Egg Harbor. Her long black serge skirt and white shirtwaist with its ruffled neck was always spotlessly clean. She wore the usual black sateen half-apron, to protect her skirt from chalk dust. Her gold watch hung on a black ribbon, and her steel rimmed glasses were a smoky color. She was very stern: I was scared of her and tried by best to subdue my usual exuberance, since she was known to order obstreperous youngsters outside to get a switch to use on their legs. I wanted no part of that. We learned the alphabet before we learned to read: wrote the letters carefully on our slates, and later on picked out words in our Heath Readers. At the end of the year we could actually spell out little stories in the book. What a thrill!
At noon, when I was taking my plastic bag of garbage out to the garbage can, the children passed again. “Well,” I asked, “how was school?” “Good!” said the youngest. “It’s O.K.” said the others, and I thought of how we would rush home during the noon hour to tell Grandma and Mama all about what happened: bubbling over with news of classmates, teachers, and principal. That first classroom was in the southeast corner of what is now the Junior High, the windows high enough so we couldn’t sit and look out on the sidewalk, but we watched the trees turn color, then lose their leaves: bare branches being covered with ice and snow. Then, in spring, the buds and tiny leaves that to us, signified the freedom of summer coming.
In the lower grades I wore pinafore-type aprons to school to protect my dresses: I was a pretty messy kid. Washing and ironing in those days was no picnic. No permanent press, no driers. Clothes were rubbed on the washboard with a P. and G. or Fels - Naptha soap, then line-dried, sprinkled and rolled up so the moisture was evenly distributed. Dresses, petticoats and shirts were starched stiff, and Tuesday morning it took lots of elbow grease and strength to rub over and over the wet material with the old sad irons till the gloss appeared and each ruffle or pleat stood out in pristine glory. The starch also helped keep the garment clean. We could change aprons, but not dresses every day. In winter when we wore wool serge dresses, aprons were an absolute necessity. Mama was an expert at ripping, turning, washing and pressing wool materials to be made over for us, but washing and pressing a dress after it was remade was another matter. We had a piece of heavy canvas to use for a pressing cloth (no steam irons then) and Papa used that cloth when he pressed his wool pants. His white shirts took extra pains, as did our embroidered white Sunday dresses: the old range was kept at high heat to have the irons just right. Remember how we’d wet a finger and touch it to the iron? Then if it sizzled, the iron was hot enough. But beware of overheating: scorched shirt fronts were anything but attractive.
Our school supplies were different then. We bought nickel tablets, composition books rather than notebooks or folders the young folks have today. We had pencils and pencil boxes (what a racket those boxes made when they fell!) There were pencil sharpeners in the classrooms, which we were allowed to use at stated intervals. But we liked to have Papa knife-sharpen our pencils. I was fascinated with the careful turning and shaving: every stroke so even, and the lead rubbed to a not-too-pointed tip. When you got to be a fourth grader you had an inkwell in your desk which was filled from a gallon bottle of ink, kept in the supply closet. You used a steel pen point fitted into a pen holder. Ink-paper was passed out when you wrote your compositions and you used a blotter to keep the words from smearing, then wiped your pen dry with a pen-wiper made from pieces of pinked flannel stitched together. It was a temptation for the boys to dip the braids of the girls seated ahead, in their inkwells. Much of the time my blond curls below the rubber band fastened were greenish-blue: until I wore my braids in “cradles,” tied with moire ribbon.
The equinox, and first day of autumn, came near the end of September. The big Door County Fair was over: apple picking was a busy time and mothers were canning apple sauce, making grape juice and green tomato mince-meat. Piccalilli, corn relish, and chow-chow lent color to the mason jars in the cellar, and a spicy come-on fragrance to the kitchen. Juicy cinnamon apples came out of the oven at the same time as the graham gems or johnny cake. We were recruited in the preparation of the vegetables or fruits to be canned for the winter supply: peeling potatoes (“Now, don’t cut those peels so thick!”) scraping carrots: weeping as we peeled the onions. Mama sharpened her knives on the edge of a crock. She had a favorite knife that we were only allowed to use if we promised to wash it and put it in a certain spot on the shelf. Mama “couldn’t abide” seeing people peel or cut with a big old-fashioned butcher knife. We thought the autumn meals, with the harvest of vegetables, the grapes, apples and pears, juicy pies and tempting puddings were the best of the year. But then, we thought every season’s meals the best.
We were supposed to come right home after school, but we usually managed to find some excuse to go down town, to “walk a ways” with a friend, or perhaps we had permission to go to a friend’s house for an hour. When we did, we usually were offered a piece of bread and butter, sometimes with sugar sprinkled on the top. Once I went with Babe Klinkenburg down to the Dehos house, and her Aunt Mae asked us if we’d like bread and butter. With a mistaken sense of shyness I said, “I don’t care,” and she told me, “If you don’t care I won’t give you any.” THAT taught me a lesson. Babe and I were good friends and neighbors, but once we had a wham-dang fight because I tattled a secret she told me.
Isn’t it funny that it’s the little things, the little irritations, the blessings and the mistakes that provide the lingering memories? Maybe it’s silly, but I think I’m happier over my set of “gold” bread pans which replaced the old black ones that I am with my new stove, though I like that too. The irritation of a pinch, the humiliation of a mistake is hard to erase. Our money values change, too. Once, when I was over at Genevieve Jacobs’ house I wound the victrola too tight, and broke the spring. Her father fixed it, and when I asked how much the repair cost, she told me five dollars. I had visions of my baby-sitting quarters piling up for half a year to pay them back. Then Genevieve laughed and said it was nothing.
Money values change the world over. Now the value of gold has gone sky-high. To us, when we were small, a penny was a lot. Penny candy, penny dolls, penny pencils, penny licorice sticks, we judged the coin’s value by what we wanted to get with it. We’d say “A penny for your thoughts,” something was “as good as gold,” or we had a “million dollar rain.” We spoke of someone being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and sometimes we heard “another day: another dollar.” But pennies were our touchstones. When we went to Sunday School we carried little pocketbooks with pennies for the collection and nickels for church offering. One time we were saying the Lord’s prayer in unison when I dropped my penny on the floor. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see it, so I went on with the prayer. After the Amen, the boy in the row ahead picked it up and handed it to me. Then Mr. Stevenson praised me: “That was very nice, Grace, that you didn’t hunt your money during the prayer.” I felt very cheap, getting credit for being good, when the only reason I hadn’t hunted it was because I couldn’t see it. We used to sing a song in Sunday school: Dropping, dropping pennies/ hear the pennies fall/ Every one for Jesus/ He will get them all.
Funny papers in those long-ago days had some old familiars. There were the Katzenjammer Kids, always in devilment, Little Orphan Annie and Buster Brown. (Once I remember seeing the real Buster Brown, a dwarf who advertised Buster Brown shoes: in Sawyer.) Expressions were different, too. We heard people say “He goes to bed with the chickens,” which seemed strange until you know he meant going at the time the chickens did. No electricity in the henhouses then: they went to roost at dusk. When Pa wound the clock and put the cat out, it was time for the beau to go home, and he’d better not delay, or there’d be no welcome sign the next time he called!
The season changed: soon it was time for us to rake the leaves and help get the garden produce packed in sand in the cellar, for winter eating. No fresh produce, in the stores in winter, and canned fruit sauce was a staple accompaniment with supper.
That’s a long time ago. This September there were changes in our lives, just as there were changes in the weather. Since I no longer have my birdfeeder, I watch the changes as the sun comes up, and marvel at the changing colors and the pendant crescent moon seemingly hanging from the bright morning star: the colored lights across the bay reflected like a huge horizontal Christmas tree in the water. Company, illness and surgery but a loving caring family to remind one there is peace for the troubled heart.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[The title quotes from the refrain of the “School days” song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmUx6Dvxb9Q
Golden glow is also called cutleaf coneflower.
Piccalilli is a mustard relish.
Hear the Pennies Dropping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oZ8J4erRi8
Buster Brown was a comic strip character which was licensed to advertise shoes: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buster-Brown ]
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