THE WAY I REMEMBER IT - 2 - Grade School

 We went to Lower Lodi School.  At the time I started, in 1947 it still had 9th & 10th grades.  There were two rooms - I only remember being in the west room where I started Kindergarten in March and recall having to read 5 or so books the last day of school to catch up with my only other classmate, Carolyn Downin who, for some reason had started in September.  Since we just moved in March that is when I started.  We were in the same grade from then until graduating from Callawy High School in 1961.

This photo of Lower Lodi School was taken at a reunion several years after the school was closed, I think.

Not sure when the photo at right was taken, but think it was by Duane Thurman when he was flying.  Lloy and Mabel Thurman (Duane''s folks) lived a few miles south and east of the school and they quite often boarded the grade school teachers.  One who boarded there, Joan Patterson, married Duane.  When I first started at Lower Lodi there were two teachers, I think Nancy Gills was the grade school teacher and Margaret Aydlotte was the high school teacher.  I may be wrong in this memory, but I believe Miss Aydlotte had lost one of her feet to a horse-drawn cycle mower and had prothetic feet.  I believe that Miss Gills and Miss Aydlotte lived in a tiny room off to the south southwest side of the basement.  It was right by the entrance to the Tornado Celler that was same level as the basement, but jutted outside and had an escape hatch outside.

I recall Miss Gills using a wooden ruler on my hads when I spoke out of turn, or some other wrong doing.  Some years, in my lower grades, they had "Fun Day" in the spring and there were a lot of outdoor activities, running, etc. I can't recall if there were other schools involved and/or any parents attended.  I got a chocolate Hershey bar for pounding the most nails into a wooden two by four in a timed competition.  There was swinging a milk bucket 180 degrees vertically without spilling any of the small amount of water in it.  Can't just recall all the other events.  I was pretty young and the older ones had more interesting things.

Various memories (come and go quick-can't hang on to all): riding the horses to school.  We had to go a short mile east, the second half of that was not graveled, then a short distance on graveled Highway 40, then a short mile south to the school. I think that part of the road was graveled.

 Much of the time we carried the little white and greet Armour Lard Can with our lunch in it.                                  Found this photo on line:

There was a long row of tall cedar trees on the west side of the road as we left the highway heading south that ran all the way up to Jim Cornish's place (He was our Landlord) and when there was wind and snow that portion of the road was always drifted with snow. Recall at least one time when drifts were completely from the top of these 15 or 20 foot tall trees across the road--even the snow plows had trouble clearing it.  We had a horse barn at school where we tied the horses inside if it was not good weather.  Sometimes tied them to a fence so they could graze a bit if better weather.  Remember one time I tied Jerry or maybe it was Tony (my horse) to the swing set.  Now that swing set wasn't set  in the ground; it was just on the ground with some frames splayed out to keep it in balance.  Of course, the horse pulled it all over the place and I was advised not to do that again.  We had a hall outside our classroom where we hung our coats and where the "crock" water cooler was.  We took turns in walking diagonally across the intersection by the school to fill a bucket of water at Katie West's farmhouse an bring it back to the school.  Our heat was by an oil burning floor furnace sort of in the center of the room.  In some of the cold winter days it was welcome to sit or stand near it.  There were times in winter that we took our clamp-on skates and went a bit south over the hill to a pond in a pasture on the west side and skated.  Seems like there were some lumps of dirt or cow chips  around the edge, which were impossible to skate through.  Don't remember if we had any games or just skated around.  Recall tracking out some pattern in the snow and some game on it where the ball diamond was.  Also, lying on our backs in the snow and making "snow angels".  There was a tank in a ground level cement square just off the ball diamond that had some sort of gas in it that powered the lights before electricity was installed.  Can't recall what that gas was called.  

In good weather we played anti-over game, using the horsebarn to throw over.  Can't remember the rules.  In bad weather we played in the basement, dodgeball being one of the games where you threw the vollyball across the room trying to hit another student.    One year when the baseball World Series was on Joan Patterson let us sit in her Ford car to listen to part of the 7th game.  I just now looked back through some really old photos on my computer and found several relating to Lower Lodi.

The photos above are from a newspaper article relating to the closing of the Lower Lodi High School.  I will try blowing the article itself up so I can retype it.  Will take some time.

Well, I have been at this now for about four hours and will quit for the time being.  More later, LCM