One Room School House

"Grade two close your scribblers and open your story books.  Grade three close your books, open your scribblers and pay attention to the black board”

So goes the one room rural school on the depression prairies , North Slope S.D. In south eastern Alberta In my case. Situated 1.5 miles south-east of our farm on a large wire fenced- in property. One large one room building with eight rows of desks and a pot belly stove for heat in the middle of the room. No generator for lights. Smokey oil lamps when required Two other smaller buildings nearby. The “teacherage” where the only teacher lived and a barn for older students who brought horses.

My one-room school house at North Slope was similar to this one at Mannville, Alberta

The eight rows of desks accommodated a grade or so for each grade. Grade ones were at the window side. Then two, three, four, five, and seven row by row to the other side of the room with additional black board space next to the last row. The teacher taught all grades without assistance . Instruction was the basics that farm kids would need- reading and writing and arithmetic (but no  hickory stick !)

I don’t remember much science except there was a large earth globe on the teachers desk with appended wires of various lengths sticking out with the models of the sun and planets set at appropriate distances. The was a large map of the world on the back wall with the countries coloured . Canada was red corresponding to the coloration of the British empire. We had the most red so we were proud. Lots of other colours were for other countries with funny names. 

 Many of the kids were from immigrant families from Eastern Europe, Scandinavia etc There were a large number of Mennonites and one large Hutterite colony who kept to themselves. . They were very poor. My dad used to give them seed grain and garden produce. I remember that many of the kids had one pair of low boots for winter but went barefoot in the summer. In retrospect many of them looked undernourished. One time there was an outbreak of “ringworm” a scalp fungus and the only treatment was to shave the hair off. There was a picture of one the classes with all these bald headed kids.

The teacher Mrs T was remarkable. Middle aged, red headed, she was really good. I don’t recall a Mr. T anywhere. Sometimes she would need help chopping wood etc so the older boys would pitch in. Also the barn needed cleaning several times a year- another job for the grade seven boys. My not so glorious contribution was to offer to chop the head of one of her chickens so she could prepare it for her dinner. I had seen this done at home so I was confident. So one swift axe cop on the block and the headless chicken spouting blood headed bouncing straight for Mrs T who with a shriek hit her door on the dead run .She didn’t hold it against me but didn’t ask me to kill another chicken

There were two visitors to the school that we didn’t look forward to- the regional nurse and horror of all horrors THE INSPECTOR. The nurse gave vaccine injections such as were available then, probably diphtheria. She appeared with a black bag in which she has all her evil supplies but it was the NEEDLES that were given closest attention. They were not disposable then so she put them in a kidney basin in water and boiled them on the top of the pot belly stove. They made a clinking sound as the boiled and vibrated against the basin. Small trembling bodies white knuckled at their desks wide eyed and awaiting their fates.

The Inspectors visit was like an inquisition. He would sit at the back of the room and monitor a nervous Ms.Ts lessons. Her anxiety transposed to us kids and we were frozen in place when she asked a question . I’m sure the guy came away with the impression that she was trying to teach a school full of mute or blathering idiots

School yard games were a big part of our school life. No gyms or swimming pools etc we played soft ball but invented other ones. In the snow the fox and hare was popular. You tramped out a big circle maybe 100feet in diameter . Then you tramped separated paths into the centre which was “home”. If you were “it” then you had to chase the others on the paths or ring before they could touch home. If you tagged one they were it and you ran the paths 

In the fall tumble weed races were keenly played. Russian thistle grew aggressively and profusely into a bundle of foliage several feet across . It was shallow rooted and when the prairie wind blew the root anchor would give way and the dried dense ball of seed filled foliage would roll across the open prairie spreading the seeds. Often you would see fences piled high with these bundles. So we would choose a bundle, go upwind to the far fence, line up and on signal let it go into the wind and chase it the full width of the school yard to see who could arrive first. Good exercise !!

Christmas concerts were a big event both at the school and in the local town Vauxhall. Costumes were home made and elaborate. The town band wheezed out carols and the town drunk sang lustily out of tune. The nativity scene was always a bit random and one time we misplaced baby Jesus but we always seem to get there

Fishing & Hunting

My dad was a crack shot both with rifle and shot gun. He won many trap and target shooting awards in local competitions. There were early pictures of him in Ontario with deer trophies . One heAd of a beautiful buck hung in our prairie home. He married my mom and they homesteaded in Loverna Saskatchewan north of Kindersley near the Alberta border. The farming was dry land meaning they depended on timely rainfall to grow crops. The lived in a sod hut the first winter until the house was finished. Brother Don was born in the back of the Loverna general store with the owners wife as mid wife. After several crop failures the moved to a new irrigation district in Alberta near the Bow river and established the farm that I grew up on.

My dad, Alex Brumwell in Loverna, Sask

Dad hunted for food and later sport. The undeveloped prairie supported a large population of speedy prong horn antelope. There was big game such as moose and deer within a half days trip to the treed wilderness. But his forte was game birds . Clouds of migratory ducks and geese. The densely wooded banks of the irrigation ditches harboured large populations of pheasants and Hungarian partridge, there for the taking.

    Fishing was available locally in the Bow river and the large irrigation lake Newell both close by. Pike, pickerel ( now called Walleye) and a bony little one called a Goldeye on offer .They could readily be caught by casting a small coloured lure and retrieving it slowly. The fishing, later bird hunting was really the only father/son activity I did with my frantically parent who otherwise was somewhat remote. I caught my first fish from the shore  in  the lake when I was 4 or 5, a small suicidal pike which I embraced in my arms racing toward my nearby dad, with my makeshift piece of bamboo “ rod” dragging behind on the ground, the hook still in the fishes mouth. I remember that he was convulsed with laughter.

The only other fishing with dad was in the summers when the whole family moved to the coolness of Watertown Lakes National Park in SW Alberta. My mother and us kid camped in a large walled tent. Simply blissful. Dad commuted from the farm . He built a little boat called “Antelope” and we trolled along the shore of the lake. One day he caught a 20 pound lake trout which collected a crowd at the campground. He was very proud . We also went up to a small trout lake above Watertown where we caught tasty little rainbow trout.

Dad and Spot

The Farm

Growing up on the farm wasn’t all that bad. I was the youngest by five years of four kids. My oldest brother Don was 18 years old when I was born. Sister Jean was 10 and brother Dick was five. There was a fifth child Jessie who died at age four of meningitis. My mother was despondent and later talked to her doctor and said I don’t know what ever I can do. He said go home and have another baby to which she replied but doctor I’m forty years old.  He said go home and have another baby anyway. So she did and got me not a dainty replacement daughter but a big hulking monster almost 13 pounds. Sister Jean always said it was she that raised me.

Brothers Don, Dick, sister Jean and farm hand

Playing on the farm as kids

Sisters Jean and Jessie

Elevators in Vauxhall, Alberta

I grew up rather isolated with no play dates or opportunities for interactions with other kids except at school. No cub scouts, skating rinks, community Centers.  My folks were frantically busy running a big farm. My best friends were probably the animals. I started reading early on and one school year around grade 6 or 7 I won a prize for reading 69 books . The first adult one published in 1939 was the biography of the physicist Madame Currie. I decided then that I wanted to be a scientist. A neighbour had a great library and I consumed almost all of it. I loved the complete works of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle .

My favorite spot in the Iiving room where I spent a lot of time reading

We kids all had farm duties. My first job at age four was gathering eggs. It took a fair amount of courage to retrieve a warm egg out from under a cranky hen. As soon as she saw your hand approaching she would peck it and it hurt. So I developed the technique of advancing my right hand toward her head and when she was distracted quietly and quickly slipping my left hand under her rump in a deft sweep to retrieve the egg like a pick pocket . Worked every time. Later in harvest season I had to shovel grain. Hard work and I hated it. Even worse was hand pumping water into big cattle watering tanks. In the hot weather a herd of cattle could suck the tank almost faster than you could pump it full. We had a huge truck garden which we cultivated with a pronged device called a harrow drawn by a scrawny old horse called Maggie. We just sat on a blanket as we didn’t have a saddle so it was my job to sit up on this saw tooth of a backbone and steer her between the rows with brother Dick behind directing the harrow. Some days my butt was so sore that I could hardly walk.

Spot with her puppies and me

My constant companion and best friend was Spot an English setter with a big black spot over right eye. The folks brought her home in the car as a puppy with me as a new born so we were the same age. We were together until we left the farm when I was age 13. She stayed behind. The farm pony was a beautiful roan called Peaches. I used to blanket ride her to school occasionally No sharp backbone on that gal. She was a bit skittery and would shy at a piece of paper etc on the road and suddenly jump sideways so you had to be sure to hold on all the time. Once she dumped sister Jean off. She got up, walked around nose to nose and slapped her face. She claimed that Peaches never did it again! We had over one hundred head of Hereford cattle, pigs, sheep, and two huge Clysdale draft horses called Mac and Queen. They pulled farm machines etc around the fields especially during the war when gas was rationed.

Me with the farm house in the background

Also we had chickens, turkeys ,and at one time raised pheasants and Chukkar partridge for release.

Jean and Dick

Family outing: Jessie, the little girl, died of meningitis before I was born