A summer visit– Part 1

A friend of mine has been keeping in touch with an Amish girl who attended our one-room schoolhouse. Gayleen and Rachel have been writing to each other at Christmas for many years now. They have visited several times over the years,  including when Gayleen and Rachel’s children were quite young. At various time, other friends have been included on those visits.

When Gayleen talked about a girls’ day and going to see Rachel, I was delighted to be included in the plans. We discussed possible dates, Gayleen wrote to Rachel, and then Rachel selected one of  those dates and wrote back. Thus the plan was made to visit her this June.

Since planning the visit, I’d been thinking especially of the Amish families who moved into our community, with their horses and buggies, and of the children who attended the same one-room school.

That experience, heavy with questions of a young child, opened my eyes to the world beyond my home and community, to the  differences in people groups, to the questions I dared not ask of them. Years later, when I discovered the author Beverly Lewis and her books about the Amish people,  her series, The Heritage of Lancaster County,  reawakened the questions I had while attending school with  the Amish children.

We met Tuesday morning at Bev’s home. When I arrived, there was Diane, a friend who now lives in BC, but who was back home in Ontario for a niece’s wedding. She had also visited Rachel on other occasions with Gayleen. Because of changing school boundaries, each one of us had met her at a particular school. For Gayleen and I, it had been the one-room school house we first attended.

With Bev as our driver, we set out  for Lucknow at 10 am on a cool but sunny morning. The hour and a half sped by with conversations on what we had been doing, and family news, and catching up with Diane whom we hadn’t seen in a few years. Gayleen updated us on Rachel’s family, on her sons and daughters, all married, their locations, and her 15 grandchildren, three of whom we might meet on that visit.

We stopped for lunch outside Lucknow, before heading to Rachel’s home. She was expecting us about 12:30pm.  In my bag was a hostess gift I had selected for Rachel, one which I had considered as a pleasing and appropriate hostess gift.

Following Rachel’s directions about the road and fire code number, we watched the country roads for particular markers and signs. We found her home easily enough. Two white frame houses, attached, and sitting along a tree-lined lane.  Beds of blooming flowers graced the outside of the white frame houses with solid unpainted verandahs or porches at the front and side doors.

Rachel must have seen our car arrive, for by the time we turned in the yard and pulled up beside the home that we thought was hers, she was out the front door, standing on the verandah to greet us. We climbed the four wooden steps to her front porch and were introduced, in turn, by Gayleen. Though we had all known her, it had been some time since we had last seen her. For me, the length of time had been longest.

Rachel spoke quickly and with the same enthusiasm and warmth I remembered from our public school days. Still Rachel, with a smile and a twinkle in her blue eyes behind the narrow-rimmed glasses. She wore a dark blue long dress with long sleeves, and a long apron in royal blue hanging from her waist. Her neat white organdy prayer kapp was in place with the ties connected loosely under her chin, framing her long narrow face. Her feet, often barefoot in public school, were in stockings and solid black shoes. After initial greetings, she welcomed us into her home.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2

A Story from England– from my guest blogger Belinda

Belinda Burston is my guest blogger today. She is a fellow writer, friend, member of The Word Guild, and a gracious and fun-loving woman who writes about her family, her own life, and those around her. Belinda is also an amazing photographer.

Read on as she shares this story, A Village Childhood.

 

A Village Childhood

Strange, isn’t it, that the best gifts often stare us in the face, unseen? The place in which I spent the longest stretch of my formative years, the village of Alvechurch, was like that.

I came there with my family as a nine year old, homesick for another village, Hagley; I spent much of my ten years there, wishing to be somewhere else. And yet, in the forty years since I left, I have returned often, as if to an old friend that never changes, one that can be counted on for welcome.

In recent years, as my mother has grown more frail, I spend time there at least once a year, more often if I can.  The familiar, 20-minute or so, early morning drive from Birmingham Airport passes an agricultural landscape of green, rolling hills and hedge-bordered fields, with picturesque stands of trees.

As we draw close to our destination, the road signs begin to mention Alvechurch and soon we pass the library, school and the big cream-coloured Red Lion pub and restaurant. We turn a corner and suddenly we are there– Tanyard Close, and Mum’s compact and cozy flat.

The name Alvechurch is derived from a woman’s name: Aelfgyth. It was Aelfgyth who, over a thousand years ago, built a church on the hill that looks down on the village. St. Laurence Church stands there now, but at one time it must have been known as Aelfgyth’s Church. Who Aelfgyth was is not known for certain, but she is thought to have been a woman of some wealth and influence–an abbess perhaps.

I count myself blessed to have had three years at the small Church of England school, itself 150 years old. I would walk there each morning, through the ancient church yard with its tall elm trees. High up in the swaying branches were crow’s nests and the air would ring with their loud cawing.  I loved to study the tipsy, tottering gravestones and try to make out the names and dates. A few of them were as old as 300 years.

At the school, my love of reading and art flourished, as well as a love of the hymns of the Church of England and prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. They nourished both the soul and spirit of the shy and sensitive child that was me.

In those days the church was not locked, and we children sometimes wandered inside, exploring its nooks and crannies. The air inside was cooler than outside and it smelled old, but not unpleasantly so. Colourful stained glass windows, including one depicting a young Queen Victoria, were a source of wonder, as was the tomb of a knight with his effigy on top of it, his hands folded in perpetual prayer. There is a scrap of a poem about him, entitled “The Legend of the Nameless Knight of Alvenchurch,” in a 1969 book, Alvechurch: An Historical and Architectural Appraisal for The Rural District Council of Bromsgrove. Here is the poem:

Beside the banks of Arrow,

Yet lingers this sad tale

Of the nameless knight whose effigy

In coat-armoure, and mail,

Lyeth in good St. Lawrence’ church

That is in Arrow-Vale.

On his shield there be no charges

Whereby he may be known

No holy text, no legend

Ingraven on the stone;

(And there the poem enigmatically ends!)

So I grew up in this village drenched in centuries of history, surrounded by hills and farms. And at last I understand the gift that it was to have such a childhood and to be myself, part of its history.

To read more about Belinda, click here .

From the one-room school house to another school… and another

 My one-room school house was only the beginning of my formal learning.  I was blessed with excellent teachers from whom I quickly learned to read and write, learn arithmetic, geography and history. I made many friends.

The classroom was a safe place to learn, the classes small and eight grades in one large room. Arithmetic was largely rote learning with much repetition to learn times tables, which we seemed to review endlessly. My teachers there— Miss Wittig, Miss Merrill, and Miss Lupton— were all competent teachers and well prepared. My mother says that when Mary started school, there was a shift in teaching reading, with less emphasis on phonics. She felt that more attention to phonics would have been helpful to my sister in learning to read.

By the time I reached Grade 5—  a challenging year, as I remember— I had two sisters in the same classroom with me. Being a peace-loving person, I wasn’t about to create a ruckus in school anyways, but had I done so, I had two sisters to tell on me at home. 

As the school board made its plans for our future, one-room school houses across our county were going to close. After Grade 5, I would go to another school for Grade 6, a two-room school house about the same age as the one up the road from us. My sister Mary was bused to yet another one-room school for her Grade 5 year, while Bonnie stayed at our nearby school. It must have been challenging for our parents if they had to talk to different teachers. Meet the teacher nights were not common as they are in city schools, or perhaps I just don’t remember.

As I attended that second school in Hickson, a new school was being built up the road— a multi-room school that was to become a senior public school. Except for illness that winter, when I missed a few weeks of classes, I enjoyed being in another school, having my first male teacher, Mr. Piggot, who would move on to that new school the next year too.

The next year, I attended Grade 7 at that brand new school, then Grade 8 too.  Students came to this school from all over our township. I rode the bus each day, a longer trip this year as I was on the bus early and the second last one off at the end of the day. I made lasting friendships and felt comfortable with my teachers Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Piggot and Mr. Hall.

During those years at the senior public school, we were bused into Woodstock for home economics classes. That building, once an armoury, had been converted for educational uses.  I remember those bus rides to Woodstock when we sang half the way there and back and waved to other drivers out the back windows of the bus.  Our bus driver, Shorty, so called on account of  his height, didn’t mind as long as we were not too loud and as long as we behaved.

Mrs. Scott, our home economics teacher, taught us about cooking and sewing. We took turns cooking and baking in the kitchen and cleaning up after ourselves, and had days at the sewing machine, making an apron or a dress or whatever we chose to sew. Only a few girls put the sewing machine needle through a finger and probably some had a burn or two working with the stove and hot pots, but I had already been in the kitchen a lot by that time, and I had already done some sewing at home.

Before the end of that second year, and because we asked, the boys were allowed to visit our classroom one time. We were ready with treats, cookies and cake.  Another day, we were allowed to visit the shop, but not to touch any of the tools. That was okay by me. We had hammers and awls and screwdrivers and saws at home in Dad’s drive shed. The power tools I didn’t care to experiment with anyways.

To be continued another day…

School days

 This is a picture of my one-room schoolhouse that is now an apartment building. Imagine a maple tree and a bike rack where the burgundy van sits and a ball field to the right.  There was no shed at the back like the one that’s there now. The cemented area out front was the place where we practised skipping singles and double dutch.

Let’s step inside now. Our wooden desks are connected and made up of separate units. One section is the table top of one desk and the seat for the pupil in front and so on down the row. Each desk top has a carved-in ridge to hold pencils and an inkwell hole for an ink bottle. Under the table tops is a space to put our notebooks when we weren’t using them.

Every week, a music teacher came to our school. She taught us about musical notes, beats, rhythm and she also taught us songs. She played the piano as we sang, after we learned our parts. I looked forward to this time each week. My friend Gayleen reminded me that we pushed desks together and beat the rhythms together.

One year, we  applied paper mache  over worn-out light bulbs, waited until they were hard and then cracked the covered bulb against something to break the glass. That was a shaker for beating time to the music. We also got to paint our shaker in pretty colours in yet another art class.

Once a month, a man came with films from the National Film Board. He showed us pictures of places around the world, and while I don’t remember all the kinds of films he showed, I still remember one about Switzerland with its tall mountain peaks and tiny mountain villages. When I read the book Heidi for the first time, I could picture Heidi walking up the steep slope to meet her grandfather and tending the goats with her friend Peter.

Sometimes as I was copying words or numbers from the blackboard and doing the work for my grade, I would listen to the teacher giving a lesson to another grade, especially the older students. I’d think how smart those students were and how much they knew.  It’s hard to ignore another lesson going on with students in the rows right next to me. I also remember a comment on one of my report cards that I should try to work faster. I was such a day dreamer even then, but I wanted to do my best work and think carefully about my work…

School will soon be back in

The backpacks and school supplies have been advertised for weeks now and the day approaches when students will return to school. Our children are grown now. I no longer walk or drive a student to school, but I think of those children who will be going.

For some children, it will be their first school experience.  A mighty step for small children used to being close to their mother’s side.  Reminds me of my early days in our one-room school house. It dates me, I know.

I grew up in the country, on a farm in rural Ontario where it was commonplace to hear roosters crowing in the morning. Quite a different sound from the bzz bzz of an alarm clock.

Mom took me to school on my first day, I remember. She says that she thought she’d have to stay at school with me, since I was so shy. But I was okay and she went home.

The teacher came outside and rang a hand bell to call everyone into the classroom.The girls entered by the girls’ door and the boys went in the boy’s door, and we met in one big classroom. That meant we had a few minutes to put our lunchboxes on the shelf in the cloakroom, and go and sit in our desks.

Certain things stand out for me yet today. Older students, neighbours and cousins, not to mention our teacher, smiled and welcomed me there. I had my own desk that I would sit in every day, a desk small enough that I could sit on the seat and my feet touched the floor, unlike most chairs in other places.

The wide blackboard  across the front of the room was filled with letters, words and numbers, which I would learn were assignments for different grades. Sometimes those words were printed in different colours.

Above the blackboard was a row of alphabet letters in their capitals and small form, and above that was our photo of the Queen, Queen Elizabeth II, wearing her crown and very elegant dress.

On any school day, we started our day with opening exercises, not stretching, as you might imagine, but standing to sing God Save the Queen, pledging allegiance to the country, while an older student held the flag. After the flag was put back in its holder, we  prayed the Lord’s Prayer then sat in our desks ready to begin our work.

Come back another day to read more.