So Long School Year!

I tend to keep time time by the passing of the school bus on the Dingman Run Road during the 180-day school year.

On winter mornings you hear it climbing the hill in the cold, still air, lights cutting through the darkness as it lumbers past. 

The big yellow and black bus that collects students on this run is still marked with the number 1. Say "Bus 1" to my kids, and you'll hear the stories about the interminably long ride to and from school - one of the first ones on and one of the last ones off.

The one time I rode a school bus up the Dingman Run Road was the second grade end-of-school field trip and picnic to Mrs. Carley's chicken farm. I was so excited to wear shorts to school and had a new outfit from Carey's Dry Goods. 

Outside working in the flower beds early to avoid the heat, I heard the bus on this its final trip of the spring, right on time a little before 7:00 a.m. this morning. I waved cheerily at the bus driver on the return trip this afternoon - early dismissal on the last day of school. 

I share Golly's memories of his school days penned in 1964.

Six or eight big yellow school buses go by and they recall days of a long time ago when Golly was seven or eight years old.

The point is  – there were no school buses.

Our family lived in the country. The school house, a one-room temple of knowledge, was two miles distant. During the school year the road was a sea of mud much of the time. It was difficult to avoid the quagmire even trying to walk at the side of the wagon tracks.

Always there was the dinner pail to carry and some times the primer, a marvelous book that taught us to read and spell "cat," "rat" and "dog."

The cafeteria – a creation not even dreamed. 

The dinner pail toted along might contain a slice or two of bread with a sparing coat of buter, a hard boiled egg, a pickle and a piece of cake. The writer can recall some boys and girls who had only buckwheat pancakes.

The drinking fountain consisted of a tin pail and a tin dipper and they became rusty quick! The toilets were two back houses and what dirty messes they were!

The word "sanitation" was not used frequently in that day, probably not in the vocabulary of many of the parents of the students, and surely not of the youngsters. It is strange but true that many of us survived.

When school was dismissed at 4:00 o'clock there were those very long two miles to walk homeward. November days were short with perhaps a light fall of snow that retarded homeward progress around and through the mud holes. Next morning the routine was repeated.

If the youngster finally had learned to read and write, spell "Mississippi" and repeat the multiplication table, he or she was pretty well equipped to face the world.

Again the big yellow buses roll by, conveying youngsters to school buildings that cost millions of dollars, wonderfully equipped and staffed by scores of well qualified instructors.

But this is 1964, not 1884.

 

Decoration Day

"Golly" shared this poem nearly every May, often beginning with the words "It comes to mind  as Decoration Day approaches."

Month of bees and birds and song,
Summer soon be coming 'long.
If it comes on time we'd say
This is Decoration Day.

This is when we bring the flowers.
Fresh with heaven's dews and showers,
Monstrous big bouquets and grand,
Scatter them with loving hand.

Proper way to keep the day.
Proper, don't you think so, say?

Those lines and many more were written by Oliver Walcott Grimm who long ago went on to his reward. The man was a carpenter by trade who worked at times in Port Allegany, Galeton and Coudersport but he loved to write and he was fond of the smell of printer's ink.

We never did know that Longfellow man, and we missed out on Riley, the one-time itinerant Indiana sign painter, but we have a very pleasant memory of Oliver Walcott Grimm. Grimm would grind out verse as rapidly as Heinz could turn out pickles, and he was possessed of a quaint sense of humor.

"In the springtime, Gentle Annie
Trailing vines and flowers seeks.
Not so with Potter's Annie,
She goes searching after leeks."

Oliver Walcott Grimm was a character we are glad we knew. He was intelligent, sensitive, temperamental and his love of strong drink was probably the downfall which tended to shorten his life, causing death at an early middle age.  Regardless of his faults we admired him and we think of one teaching of the Elks – "The faults of our brother we write on the sands, their virtues on the tablets of love and memory."

If we knew where rested the remains of this one-time friend, it would please us very much to scatter a few flowers "with loving hand" on his resting place. We shall at least think of him, and most kindly, this Decoration Day.

I have accepted this challenge - all these years later - to know where rest the remains of Oliver Walcott Grimm so that I might be the one to remember with a scatter of flowers.

May Baskets

Do youngsters hang May Baskets nowadays?"

was the question my grandfather "Golly" asked in 1964.

Then he told this story:

"Away back about 1885 it was a custom for a lad to make a May basket. Scraps of wallpaper and a little paste, made with flour and water, were the materials used - even the bale of the basket being of paper.

 The flowers to fill the basket were the wild flowers of the woods nearby.

Then on the first night of the month, the young swain would, under cover of darkness, approach stealthily the home of his young girl friend and hang the basket with its hidden endearing message and flowers on the door.

Lucille, blond and pretty, usually got the Golly guy's basket. The sad part of the story was that Lucille was so popular that Golly was not the only admirer who quietly approached the home, hung the basket on the door knob, gave a timid rap and beat a hasty retreat to a safe distance and watched to see who found the basket. The whole experience was dangerous(?) and it was surely thrilling. 

Golly was a bit afraid of blonde Lucille's father. He was Dempster Partello, known as "Demp" to his friends. We thought at the time he was an ogre. 

Only a few years ago Golly had the pleasure of greeting Lucille, now Mrs. Everett Knapp, Corning, N.Y. Her blond hair has turned to silver but her smile was still pleasing."

the fair Lucille?