Liberty Rural School House No. 6
as remembered by Dora Schmidt Goosen
Liberty No. 6 was located five miles north of Meriden, Iowa.
Liberty
No. 6 was a one-room school house. At the entrance there was a
sort of a room to hand coats and a place for overshoes. At one
end of this small room there was a washroom with a water cooler,water
pail, and a dipper and wash basin and soap. There was also a
library and a shelf for dinner pails. Water had to be carried for
drinking, washing of hands and so forth. In winter we would use
melted snow. At the other end of the entrance there was a small
addition built on which was for coal, cobs, coal oil, and sweeping
compound, brooms a shovel and a basket to take out the ashes from the
pot-bellied stove.
The teacher came early to start the fire and
warm the school room. Usually she banked the fire in winter so the room
wouldn't cool off so much, and it would be easier to get the fire
started in the morning.
The teacher usually stayed with some
family in the school district and walked to school. She swept the
floors each day. She cleaned the windows on Friday. The teacher also
dusted the erasers and washed the black boards. Every so often we
had to clean out our desks and scrub the tops.
The school
director was elected and had to mow the ground and clean the school
house before the school opened in the fall. He also had to see
that there was always coal, cobs, coal oil and other supplies.
I started school at seven years old and there was only eight months of school. Our school had a lot of students.
At class time we were called and sat on a long bench before the teacher's desk. This bench was called a recitation bench.
Our
games were baseball, and we would have some real brawls, pump pump pull
away, anti over, flying Dutchman, button button, hide the thimble,
spelling bees, and arithmetic.
Almost always there were all grades, primary through eighth.
We
had Christmas programs, Thanksgiving programs, Valentine's Day
celebrations, May baskets, basket parties, socials, oyster stews,
sleigh rides, ice skatings, and year end picnics, weiner roaster after
raking the lawn in the spring, and Halloween parties.
Some of
the children had to walk a mile and a half, some a mile, others a half
mile to school. I lived only a short distance from the school so
I could have walked home for dinner which I did in the upper grades.
When
in the seventh grade we were sent to the Center School to take tests.
The County Superintendent of schools sent the questions to the
teacher for geography and physiology. When we had taken the test, she
would send them back to the superintendent. The teacher who was
teaching at the Liberty Center school when I took the seventh grade
exams was Edna Dahlgren Mackoski who now lives in Cherokee.
Lew
McDonald was Superintendent of Schools. He came to the school
once. We were all scared when he began to ask questions. He came
around to visit the schools every so often.
As for our dinners, we carried ours in a half gallon syrup pail.
(Source: Former Cherokee County Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 13, No. 1, Jan 1978, pg. 3)
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