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School
Remembering Vergas School District No. 268, by Rodney Hanson
As
soon as I looked at Roland I knew he was asking for trouble.
We were straggling back into the school after recess and he
had a big smile he couldn't contain. All us guys had heard a
dirty story out in back by the outhouses and he was beaming.
It was
actually a riddle with a naughty answer, at least naughty
for the late 30s and at least bad enough so you wouldn't
want Mr. Bachman to hear it. But Roland wouldn't leave it
alone. As soon as story time came around in the classroom he
stood up and asked the question, expecting one of us to give
the answer and surely catch heck.
No one
was dumb enough to raise their hand and Roland started to
worry. "Come on 'Cloudy' you know the answer. Come on
'Booby,' you know. Come on you guys." He started to sweat
and with reason. Bachman was on him like an attack dog,
grabbed him by his left ear and marched him off to his
office. You could hear the hollering and the whole classroom
sat quietly, glad they were all innocent as angels. Many
years after whenever Roland would happen to come into our
store I instinctively looked at his left ear and imagined
it looked longer than the other.
Mr.
Bachman was one of the few male teachers in the rural
schools back then. He taught the 7th and 8th grades in that
upstairs classroom and was also the Vergas Superintendent
with an office just off his classroom. I considered him a
good teacher although very strict. Not only did he teach us
English, geography, history and so on but he would elaborate
on current events. He didn't believe in the coming aviation
age declaring one day that "If God had wanted us to fly he
would have given us wings."
I know
I had a smart reply but never in all the world would have
dared to say it aloud. Also one day he was worked up about
Vergas being the kind of town where everyone knew your
business. "In fact" he told the 20‑30 of us listening "I can
go home tonight, go upstairs, pull down my shade and sneeze
and the next day Mrs. Olsen will meet me on the street and
ask me how my cold is." I suppose we all went home and told
our folks.
The
other room on that second floor had also been a classroom at
one time, but by the time I got there it was used for some
all school activities as well as storage for the instruments
left over from the old Vergas town band.
I can
also remember it being used by the W.P.A. instructor sent to
us for our vocational training. One summer some highway
engineers met there when they drew plans to cut through the
woods and hills north of town for the new County Highway No.
17.
The
lower level of that two‑story‑frame building was for the
first six grades. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades were in the
room towards Ernie Brooks livery barn and the 4th, 5th and
6th in the room towards the tennis court.
Both
had female teachers, all had the advantage of listening to
the lessons of the other classes so students could review
what they had missed last year or listen in on what they
could expect next year.
The
desks with their lift‑up tops and seats were not always big
enough for the kids that had failed a couple years. Some
were built to hold two pupils and you went through phases of
not wanting a girl to sit next to you, to really wanting one
there. One of the accidents waiting to happen were the
inkwells cut into the top of each desk with liquid ink to
use with quill‑type pens and later fountain pens. Of course
ballpoint pens had not been invented yet. I recall
blackboards along the walls with small and capital letters
across the top and a globe of the world hanging down on some
rope and pulley apparatus.
Twenty‑year‑old maps that you could pull down like window
shades and search for borders in Europe that were changing
as you looked. Wood floors smelling like oil, chalk erasers
waiting their daily dusting. A stone crock drinking fountain
with a galvanized pail underneath about to overflow.
Teacher
pointer sticks resembling the pool cues down at Fankhanels
Beer Hall. Large pictures of George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln and of course the U.S. flag with 48 stars. And also
the steaming radiators with an erratic pinging that sounded
like tin cans being shot off a row of fence posts with a .22
rifle.
We
called half of the basement in that old school an
"industrial arts" room but it hardly deserved the name, it
was so lacking in tools. Nothing electric of course. The
other half of the basement housed the boiler room, tended at
that time by the dependable Iver Lee. Outside were cords and
cords of wood brought in from the surrounding farms to feed
the boiler. Also outside were the boy's and girl's
outhouses, separate frame buildings, about 8 feet by 12
feet, located about 50 feet apart. The boy's had a trough
tacked to the wall on one end that was slanted all the way
to the hole in the ground below. It could accommodate boys
of any age or height.
There
were about 15 rural schools in the three townships
surrounding Vergas. All were one room buildings with one
teacher who not only taught all eight grades but was their
janitor, schoolyard coach, music instructor, lunch‑maker,
nurse, counselor and arbitrator. An underpaid wonder woman.
Once a
year the Vergas School would invite the neighboring
districts of No.'s 121, 98, 76, 151 and others to take part
in "Field Day." There would be pole vaulting, broad jumping,
sack races and ball games. Another school yard competition
was marble shooting, most of us using the common clay
variety and then advancing to the glass type or "aggies,"
and then the big shots would come along with "steelies."
Most of us boys wore overalls as did some of the girls, if
not dresses. No slacks that I recall. One year Lottie showed
up with a "chore girl" hair piece‑a copper scoring pad
unraveled into a hair net. It was a short summer fashion
craze.
District 268, the two‑story, four‑room schoolhouse I'm
remembering here, my school, started in 1905 and served
Vergas until 1958 when it was replaced with a modem
consolidated new building which has since become our
community center and the school kids are bussed to Frazee.
It's hard to realize it was our school home for 53 years and
has already been gone 43 years.
Mr.
Bachman left Vergas and went on to Fergus Falls becoming
Superintendent of all the 289 rural school districts in the
county. (Otter Tail County had more rural schools than any
other county in the state.)
I
had a lot of respect for Bachman as I think back. He taught
me a lot, not only did I learn who wrote "A Tale of Two
Cities" and what the capitol of Delaware is" but also how
nosy Mrs. Olsen was |
