| DIZNEY GRAMMER SCHOOL DAYS MID TO LATE 1950s In the first grade mom would take me out of the holler every day for school. She got the school bus to pick me up and drop me off at the bridge at Stretch Neck Holler. My left leg was weak from the Polio I contracted in 1949 at 11 months old. Mom would hold my hand so I would not fall if my leg got tired and gave way on me. That first winter when the holler got hard to travel from snow and ice mom would keep me home. I missed half that first school year but my teacher passed me to the second grade. After a few years I would walk out of the holler for school with my brothers and I started walking to Jones store and wait for the bus. The bus kept dropping me off at the big bridge after school. Sometimes we would charge one thing extra to go with our sandwich. Almost everyone in Dizney had a credit tab at Jones store. I used to love getting a bottle of RC pop with a bag of peanuts. I would pour the peanuts into the soda and it was sooooo good. The Dizney grade school building was in the shape of a horse shoe. The building faced the county road. The buses would stop in font of the building to let us get off and continue a few yards up the road and turn around. A dirt road continued on up another holler. There was a porch that ran from one side around to the other end of the inside of the building. On rainy days or if the sun was too hot to play outside. We sould sit on the porch and eat our lunch. My brothers and I usually took bologna sandwiches or peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. The bologna we got at Jones store and the peanut butter came from Aid to Dependant Children or some similar name. It was food for poor families. We would also get rice, cheese, powdered milk and probably other stuff I can't remember. There was no running water, in side toilets or central heat. There was electricity. We had outside toilets, one for the boys and one for the girls. Each room had a potbelly coal stove. The boys would bring in coal and kindlin for each room. The teachers had to get there early enough to have the fires going when the school bus dropped us off. Each room had a bucket and a dipper of water. Not very sanitary. The school was supplied all pencils, paper, book and other supplies. We certainly were too poor to buy school supplies. There were a couple of big blackboards and lots of chalk in each room. Some rooms were for two or three grades so they needed a blackboard for each grade. I remember that there were three or four room and a couple of empty rooms used to store stuff and one was where food was cooked for our lunch, if we could afford a quarter. The room where the supplies were kept was also where teachers took kids to get a paddling. There were a few books. Art consisted of construction paper and crayons . There would be a 8 1/2 X 11 box with a lid in each room for stencil forms. The stuff in the box was some type of jell and I think it was blue or purple and smelled pretty bad. The teachers would be given these stencils for the lessons. The teacher would press down a blank piece of paper onto the jell and repeat the process until she had a page for every student. It was an early form of a photocopy machine. When I was maybe 8 or 9 mom moved us out of the holler into the house close to Grandma Presley by the main paved road. Mom didn't want me walking out of the holler in the winter. My brother's and I would walk home to this house for lunch in the summer. The school had decided to make lunch for the kids. I ate their lunches in the beginning but the food wasn't very good so I started walking home with my brothers. My favorite teach was Mrs. Cusick. She was so good to me. She took me and my friend Wanda home with her a couple of times to sleep over. We had to walk across the cumberland river on a swinging bridge to get to her house. That was scarey. Guess that's why I only slept over a couple of times. Mrs. Cusick gave my younger brother Donnie a cat. He brought it home and daddy had a fit. But mom persuaded him to let Donnie keep it. After I grew up daddy told me why he hated cats. Seems that when I was only a few months old, we had a cat and daddy found it in my crib sitting on my chest. Daddy took that cat out and shot it. Religion was a very important part of our schooling. There was a man who came to the school once a year. He must have been a preacher. When he came it was like a big party. There were prizes and games for the students. One of the things I remember most was that I would study my bible versus and when I thought I had them memorized Mrs. Cusick would listen to me recite the verses and she kept a record book that she would present to Mr. Pinkey when he came. The pictures of all the students gathered by the school house was Mr. Pinkey's doing. He brought the photographer who took the picture. I assume that each family that had one or more children got a picture. Mom gave me the picture when I was in highschool and I kept it until it fell apart. When I was making my first web page someone was nice enough to e-mail me the school house picture. That picture will be included in this web page also. Each teacher had their own special paddle and they didn't hesitate to use it. Most students who got paddled at school got another one at home just to reinforce the punishment. There weren't very many problems at school. Every now and then some boys would get into a fight at recess. Once a year we had another visitor that if we knew when she was coming, we all would have stayed home sick. There was never an advance warning from the teachers. When Mrs. Boggs, the county nurse, arrived with her black bags and needles the news spread like wildfire. Kids were screaming and crying the entire time she was there. To me she brought only pain and a half dozen trips to the outside toilet. She just scared the you know what out of me. It's a wonder I didn't just pass out while I was waiting in line. My cousin Sheila told me of her experiences with Mrs. Boggs. She didn't say she was scared, just said that my younger brother Donnie was usually with her class she would try to give him courage, but his skinny little body just shook all over and he was among those screaming and crying all day. Continued to next page..... |