Below is the final of a four-part memoir of Don Stanley about his childhood on Maine Prairie. School I don’t know why we went to No. 30 “Farwell” instead of the Brown school which was closer. We had about 1 1/2 miles to go. On the road we had to go through poplar woods and oak woods. These were not much of a woods, but to young eyes they were. The lake ran parallel with the road to the east. In winter when the ice was good enough we used to skate a lot on the way to school. One day Tom and I were skating when we came to a place where someone had taken out ice for storage. There was a pole stuck up to warn where it was. Tom had to try the new ice. It wasn’t strong enough to hold him. I helped him out and he went to Aunt Add’s and I went to school. On the way home in spring with my cousins and older brothers we would go along the lakeshore sometimes. We used to drown out ground squirrels by carrying water in our dinner pails – or use a fish line for a snare with the loop over the hole and get back a distance so as to jerk the string when the squirrel stuck his head through the loop. The rest could whistle like a squirrel to get him to come up, but I couldn’t because I had fallen on a plowshare when I was small and had cut my upper lip from my mouth to my nose. It left a scar. When I was hurt I went across the road where the older boys were playing ball. They took me back to the store where my father cleaned me up and pushed the parts together and he put a Corts plaster on it. It was a black sticky plaster, a forerunner of tape. The people coming to the store thought my father put it on to keep me from eating candy. We had many pranks at school. One year we took to snowballing the people that drove by in their sleds and sleighs. One woman – we always tried to ride the runners of her sled but she had a whip that was long enough to reach the full length of the sled. One day we saw someone coming with a nice team on a sleigh that we decided to snowball. We surely gave him a good snowballing. He drove past the schoolhouse and turned in and tied the team to a telephone pole. Then we knew who he was! He was the County Superintendent. Then we knew we were in for it for sure. This happened just before school started in the morning. He took the whole session until recess discussing the event. Other times he would teach a whole session and he was a good teacher, but not this time. He said he drove up to one school yard and the older boys came out and took care of his horses and tied them up and he went into the school house and was warmly welcomed. He drove up to another and the boys were lined up along side of the road and snowballed him until he passed the schoolhouse. As he started to enter the cloakroom he met a young man going out and he asked who the teacher was. He just grinned and went on out. (That was me!) When school was called he started the story. There were pupils on the seats, under the seats, and they were everywhere. There was chalk on the floor and everything was surely a mess. The teacher cried. She could not get another school in the state. She finished that term. Later Tom and I got in a name-calling with some girls. The teacher told us to go home and stay away from school. Tom and I knew that father and Lafe were starting on their hunting trip to northern Minnesota that morning. So Tom and I hid in the woods until we had seen them out of sight and then we went home. Later Louida told mother some of what these girls called us and the teacher said we could come back, but mother said we wasn’t learning anything anyway so we could stay home as we were needed at home. Cousins George and Barney Stanley would put the caps of rifle cartridges on the stove just before school started and it would take about 15 minutes for them to get hot enough to explode. Usually the boys were aware of it so the girls would be the ones that would jump. Then there was the inkwells and hair braids! One time the teacher caught two girls eating rhubarb in school time. She sent one boy to the neighbor’s rhubarb patch to bring several stalks of rhubarb back. The teacher stood those girls up before the school and made these girls eat several stalks of rhubarb each. The next morning the mothers came to school with their children. I guess the girls were made sick from the rhubarb. There was surely some argument between the mothers and the teacher. When the thing was over there were only 5 or 6 pupils that came for the rest of the term. Most of the parents took sides with the mothers. That was the term that I learned the most. The teacher was a good teacher and with so few pupils we got more out of the lessons. I remember one man, Riley Hoskins, that never wore a cap. You could see him standing up in the sled when other men sat down in the sled box and covered up with blankets with caps on. I remember some boys thought they could do it if Riley could, but they soon had frozen ears. The lake was near enough so that at the noon hour we could go to the lake and skate or play on the ice if it was in condition. [Don Stanley attended high school in Kimball, and recalled the day in 1911 that the Kimball school burned to the ground. It was on the corner where the Church of Christ was later located. A brick building was then built that remained until the current school was erected.] In town school was different for I was older. Fred, Guy and I sat in the middle of the room and we could brace our knees and shake the floor so the children downstairs were afraid. After we got the floor moving one could keep it going or change off. Cousin Gladys used to throw marbles up the outside aisle. I was at the blackboard when I saw soot coming from hot air duct. Prof. went down and came back and said he couldn’t find anything wrong. In 1/2 hour the fire came through the lower floor. The school burned. oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Sharing stories and photos like these from the journal of Don Stanley and his pioneer family saves our history forever. Thank you to the Stanley family for this great treasure. If you haven’t yet considered your stories or photos for this column, we invite you to contact us. Renew today for 2004 membership, and thank you for your membership support. Your participation does much to strengthen this Society. Our organization meets all federal and state non-profit requirements, including 501(c)(3) status, so all memberships and contributions are tax-deductible. Help give Kimball’s past a great future. For more information, membership, or schedule of events, please contact the Kimball Area Historical Society at P.O. Box 100, Kimball MN 55353, or call (320) 398-5250, 398-5743, or (800) 252-2521 from out of area.
