Great Teachers at Richter School
I must not end my account of my days at Richter School without giving credit to the fine teachers who taught there the seven years I attended. As the many years have gone by since I left the school in 1932, I have come more and more to appreciate the hard work and long hours those teachers put in to get us country kids off to a good start. I've already recounted my first two years, when Miss Woodward was teacher.
Our school was always small. The largest number of pupils we ever had, I think, was seventeen. That was when I was in the third grade. That was quite a handful for one teacher, you can be sure. So far as we youngsters were concerned, though, it was 'the more the merrier.' Our teacher that year was Mrs. Rose J. Burke, an older lady (widow of a pioneer homesteader), and well experienced in teaching small schools. We all liked her. The Carter family I mentioned earlier had moved into the community, and their seven children were all new to us. Sadly, I was the only student ready for the third grade, while two of the Carters, Ralph and Dortha, were ready for the fourth grade. Mrs. Burke, by adjusting my studies somewhat, had me study and recite with Ralph and Dortha, so that I finished both the third and fourth grades that year. Whether that was good for me, or not, I really don't know. The studies were easy for me, but having moved ahead by a year, I think I did lack social maturity in later years, especially when in high school. At any rate, I thought it was a great year. Ralph and I became good friends, very competitive in the games we played. Of course, when spring weather came, I was as anxious as anyone to be free again, but we Cumming kids would always be looking forward to school long before it began in the fall.
Our teacher in my fifth grade year was a young woman, a Norwegian, from Glasgow-- Sigurd Vegge. She was young and pretty, and all of us boys fell in love with her. I know that we had a lot of visitors that year-- young fellows just happening to ride by would stop to visit school, to get a drink of water and possibly get to talk to the teacher after school. The word really got around.
As usual, there was a community "box social" held at the school that fall, sometime near Hallowe'en, I think. All the farmers wives and daughters carefully prepared decorated boxes (each filled with a substantial lunch for two) for sale. The greatest secrecy was maintained so (supposedly) no one would know to whom a particular box belonged. Miss Vegge's box was especially sought by some of the young men in the area. The boxes were auctioned off in the evening. We had a big crowd and the bidding went higher and higher, especially as Miss Vegge's box apparently had not yet been sold. I don't remember who finally bid the best price for her box, but I know there were a lot of disappointed fellows! I had to eat with one of my sisters, I've forgotten which!
That same year the younger brother of John Goodmanson, our Norwegian bachelor neighbor who kept the school supplied with drinking water, came to visit and help John, who had had a stroke. Magnus, the brother, had a totally different last name; it wasn't Goodmanson at all. They explained that in Norway when a young man went to work for a neighboring farmer, he took that name, or some variation of it, as his second name. Anyway, Magnus was one of the several suitors who liked our new teacher.
For several months of the year Miss Vegge stayed at our house, as there was no other suitable accomodation for her in the community. I still don't know how we managed, as our small house simply didn't offer privacy at all to someone like a teacher. But stay with us she did. She often curled her hair with one of the old-fashioned curling irons which were heated in a kerosene lamp chimney, and the smell of scorched hair would go all over the house.
She had her "bedroom" (really, just a corner of the living room, screened off with a sheet) and we kids were required to vacate the premises whenever she had company. Sometimes we would quietly sneak into the attic upstairs above the room, and watch her and her company through convenient knot holes in the ceiling boards. I can remember sitting up there, having trouble keeping my snickering from being heard, while the two would sit and talk. With Magnus, who came sometimes, it was a quiet evening, for he would scarcely say a word. Miss Vegge once told our mother that she didn't know what to do--he wouldn't talk, or play cards, or do anything. He just sat and looked at her!
We were always much concerned not to bother Miss Vegge any more than we could help. One time in the spring, when the weather was fairly warm, my mother and I were milking the cows out in the lane in front of the house. This was fairly early in the morning, and Miss Vegge was still in bed. My younger sister, Mary, hearing us talking together as we milked, came to the front of the house, right in front of the window, and shouted to us to be quiet, so we wouldn't wake Miss Vegge! Needless to say, she was thoroughly awake by that time!
It was when Miss Vegge was teacher that I had my first experience in shooting a pistol. Someone had convinced her that she ought to be able to protect herself, so she had purchased a tiny .22 revolver. She brought it to school one day, with some shells, and let us older boys take turns shooting at fence posts in front of the school. I loved it, and from that day wanted to own a pistol of my own! But that was the only time that I know of that she brought the gun to school. Having firearms around the school house was forbidden, and I think someone on the school board probably told her not to bring it there again.
She was also the teacher who first talked to us children about good eating habits. One morning, early in the year, she asked how many of us had eaten pancakes for breakfast. Now that was one of the staples of life among the homesteaders in those days, and we Cumming kids were proud of our mother's pancakes, and how many we, especially our Dad, could eat. So we told her that we had had pancakes that morning, with salt pork, and how Dad had eaten a dozen or so. Then she proceded to tell us how indigestible pancakes were, how they weren't good for us, and so on.
We kids were really upset about it, and told our parents all about what she had said. Poor girl, when she came to our house to stay that winter, she found out more about pancakes! Miss Vegge only taught at our school one year, and I don't know whether she continued in teaching after her year at our school. Later she married a farmer who lived near Glasgow. Years later, she came to the the funerals of both my mother and father, and we were able to visit a bit again. She was, or is, a fine person!
I can remember so well our teacher in my sixth grade year--Mrs. Ruth Putz. She was a little whiffet of a person, wouldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet. On the first day of school she sort of danced back and forth up in front of us, telling us of all the exciting things we would be doing that year, including having a Maypole dance in the spring. Of course we country kids had no idea what that was, or whether we were interested in doing anything of the sort.
Then she began calling on some of us to answer questions, to see where we were in our studies. I remember that my friend Ralph Carter was a bit slow in answering, and she came down the row of seats, had him hold out his hand, and gave him a sharp smack across the palm with a ruler. I thought it was terrible, and could hardly look at her, I was so angry. It took several weeks for me to get over that; I thought she was awfully unfair. Ralph had always been slow in speaking, and he wasn't trying to be smart or anything.
But as school went on, we all found that Mrs. Putz was really a good teacher, and we all learned a lot that year. She rented a little shack next to John Goodmanson's house to live in. Her husband and their little three year old boy would come to the shack some weekends, and sometimes to school. The boy was just a little fellow, but very clever.
Before the year was over, Mrs. Putz had enlisted me to climb up into the attic to get down the Christmas decorations (that sort of proved that I was a "big" boy now), and also asked me to be guide on nature walks we took on Fridays. Once the whole school, with me leading the way, walked far to the east, about three miles or so, to Brush Fork, the next large creek east of our Black Coulee. There we had our lunches, and talked about various trees and shrubs. That was a highlight of the year, so far as I was concerned.
Did we have the Maypole dance? You bet we did. Mrs. Putz and her husband put up a pole down in the coulee west of the school, and we all helped make long streamers of crepe paper for the maypole. We practiced quite a bit, each of us holding a streamer, and marching round and round the pole, inter-weaving our streamers to make different designs on the pole. It was really quite interesting, we had to admit.
When the day came for the public showing of our Maypole, though, if I remember rightly, we didn't have such good luck, got mixed up, some streamers broke, and it was more or less a disaster. But Mrs. Putz was game,and didn't let it bother her. She was the first teacher we had who got us kids at the Richter School involved in county school activities. She drove a little Ford sedan, and one wet, rainy Saturday in the spring, when the roads were terrible, she took a load of us youngsters (four or five) all the way to Opheim, a trip of over seventy miles, to take part in a scholastic meet there. I think it was too wet (it rained most of the day) to have the track events, but we did well in the scholastic tests, and enjoyed it a lot. That sort of paved the way for our taking part in the scholastic and track meets held in Hinsdale in the years that followed.
Mrs. Putz later became County Superintendent of Schools, an office she held for many years. I don't know, but I'll bet a lot of teachers were afraid to have her come to visit, as the Superintendents did in those days. She had very high standards of teaching, and was a real blessing in our county. I don't think I ever saw her again after she left our school.
Viola Woodard (only now it was Mrs. Floyd Richter) came back to Richter School and was my teacher for both my seventh and eighth grade years. She was such an encouraging teacher. When I complained that there were no more books in the school bookcase for me to read, she pointed to the whole shelf of the World Book Encylopedia, and had me read that. Sometimes she would quiz me on something I had read. She also encouraged all of us in competing in the annual track and scholastic meets held in Hinsdale.
In the spring of 1932, Mrs. Richter coached me in preparation for the 8th grade exams required of all the graduating 8th graders in rural schools. (Town kids didn't have to take the tests, probably because someone thought the town schools were superior!) She promised me a dollar for each exam in which I achieved a score of 90 or higher. There were eight exams, and that promise cost her $8, the most money I had ever had at one time!
I feel that it was a privilege, not a hardship, to attend a small country school, with the kind of teachers I had had. I know that we homesteaders' kids certainly received a good start at Richter School.