When I was in grade school the janitor's job was one of the best ways around for a kid to make some spending money. The job always went to one or two of the oldest boys in school, so it kind of helped when the enrollment was small. Also, it didn't hurt if your Dad was on the School Board. No one worried very much about nepotism in those days.

I started my two-year career as school janitor when I was in the 7th grade. I shared the job with a neighbor boy who was in the 8th grade. The job consisted of about 45 minutes each afternoon sweeping out the mud and crud, a few minutes each day shoveling coal into the furnace, and at least one afternoon each month mopping and waxing the floor. Then at the end of the month we each got a check for ten dollars. Who could ask for anything better than that?

We always took turns stoking the furnace, because to get to the basemant steps we had to pass through the small, cramped area that served as the school kitchen. By the middle of the morning there was usually some dessert that was ready to eat, and the cook was always willing to hand us a large portion as we passed through.

At lunch time we took turns pumping the old pitcher spout pump so that everyone could pretend to wash their hands. Our school was fixed up pretty fancy. The cistern was at the corner of the school, but through some miracle of modern plumbing, it was piped inside to a pump which was mounted over a large tin sink. The sink drain ran through the wall and dumped into a puddle outside. If someone was mad at the janitor, that puddle made it possible for them to track mud inside, even in the middle of a severe drought.

When the weather was really cold we had a serious problem keeping the fire burning all night. When it went out it would take three or four hours the next morning to get the school warmed up. We had gotten pretty tired of the teacher fussing at us about the school being cold, so we kept adding a little extra coal each afternoon.

One cold winter day we decided that the fire was NOT going to go out that night. It didn't! About 1 a.m. the phone rang and my Dad was informed that the school was on fire. The furnace had gotten red hot, and ignited a box of trash that we had left sitting a little bit too close.

There were no rural Fire Departments back then, but since it was a school building, the city Fire Department made an exception to their policy and came out to the country to fight the fire. They finally got it out, but about all that was left was a brick shell.

The District was in the process of building a new school, to replace seven one-room schools, so the old building wasn't rebuilt. New glass was hastily installed in the doors and windows of an abandoned school building about eight miles away, and it was used for one and a half years, until the new school was finished.

When the seven schools got moved into the new building things got real modern, and a full-time janitor was hired. I had the priveledge of being one of the last school-boy janitors in Boone County, MO.

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