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A One Room School House
By Frederick Corrigan
I previously wrote an article about my first school year in a small town in the White Mountains area of New Hampshire. The year was 1940; my teacher had been at the school for 34 years and had been my father’s teacher. The school superintendent only visited the school every two weeks, which left the teacher as the lone authority. The one room school had 12 grades, which must have been a challenge for this lady. Some of the other challenges included no flush toilets, no running water, a wood stove for heat and no electricity. The younger children were seated in the front of the room and the older students were seated progressively, by age, to the back of the room. Something was always going on and it was difficult to concentrate on your coloring lesson when the students behind you were learning history, geography or arithmetic. However, as I think back, it gave a new meaning to learning by association and as you progressed through the grades you relearned many facts about every subject. This first year was quite overwhelming for a 5 year old country boy and at that time, I thought all schools were just like mine. Now, the plot thickens! The merry month of May brings the start of spring and also the dreaded “Black Flies” to the White Mountain region. The start of spring brings about jobs like painting the outside of the trailer. My father and grandfather were painting the roof on a trailer and were starting to get attacked by the “Black Flies”. My father suggested that my 6 year old brother and I should build a smudge pot to drive the flies away. We two boys went into the garage and got a large metal pail and put some rags into the pail. Our father then told us to go next door to the trailer, where we lived, and put a little kerosene on the rags in the pail. Next to our trailer we had two 55 gallon drums, one with kerosene and one with liquid propane gas. We were rushing to get the smudge pot going and in our haste we put the propane gas into the pail of rags. We ran back to the where our father was working and at his direction we set the pail on the ground. He threw a book of matches down to my brother and instructed him to strike a match and throw it into the pail of rags.
My brother struck the match, I looked into the pail and as the match hit the rags there was an explosion. All I saw was flames and according to my father, I started to run. As the story goes, my grandfather jumped from the roof of the trailer, ran me down, threw me to the ground and pulled my flaming dungarees off me. The damage was pretty severe as the explosion had singed my hair, burnt off my eye brows and burnt my face leaving ½ inch blisters hanging from my lips. When my flaming pants were pulled down, my leg skin was rolled down to my ankles. They took me to a doctor, who had an office in his house, in the next town seven miles away. Over the next four months, I stayed inside as the doctor was concerned about infection. Many of my school mates came to visit and helped to entertain me. Some of them, only 6 to 10 years of age, would walk more than 3 miles to get to my parent’s trailer. These kids would help me with my school lessons, play card games, board games and try to help me pass away the time of being confined. I missed the last 6 weeks of school, but because I made up all of my school assignments over the summer, I was promoted into the second grade. I still carry many of the burn scars, but better yet, I remember the simple beginnings with good friends.
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Contributor's Note
The one room school house is gone now,but a great many people owe their formal education to the dedication of the teacher who spent over 35 years in their town.
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What an experience for a young boy to go through. I'm glad you survived it none the worse for wear. Thank you for sharing. Your articles are a delight to read.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Good to hear from you again, Catherine.
Thanks for stopping by and for your kind comments.
Best wishes.
Frederick
The copyright for this content entitled "A One Room School House" has been specified by the contributor as:
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If you use this content according to the license specified, you must link to the following URL:
http://frederick.qondio.com/
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