Ownby School

The Ownby School was located on the first gravel road west of 151 running from YY to M Highway. It was on the east side of the road: the school yard is now grown up in brush and trees. There is little evidence that a country school was ever there.

Memories of Hazel Boulware

I really dreaded I really dreaded having to start to school; I was such a scared little mouse. The morning arrived though; I was put on Fanny, sandwiched in between Geneva and Faye, for the trip to Ownby School, perhaps a mile on down the road south of our house.

It was a beautiful, almost hot day. All the students were gathered under the huge old oak tree waiting for the bell to ring announcing it was time to “take up books.”

Miss Alma Simpson was the teacher. It may have been her first year of teaching, if so, she was probably as scared as I was!

The school was on the east side of the road facing west. There was a pony barn with 3 or 4 stalls out back near the yard fence. There was a cistern and every year when school started one of the school directors would put potassium permanganate in the water. This turned the water purple and killed any bacteria that might have grown in the water during the summer. It looked and tasted horrible for a week or longer. I don’t know why they couldn’t have put it in a couple of weeks before school started.

There were two outside toilets over pits dug in the ground. One for the boys and one for the girls.

The windows were on both sides of the school building, until some one decreed that all the light must come over the pupil’s left shoulder. The south ones were then closed up. The floors were bare wood and they had been oiled to keep down dust. There was a huge stove in the corner of the room. There was a small bookcase with a few books, these were rotated every month with the other four schools in the consolidated district. One Friday afternoon each month we were dismissed an hour or so early and the five teachers met at Middle Grove, discussed problems, and exchanged books and other materials.

Our playground equipment consisted of a baseball, bat, glove, and maybe a swing in the old oak tree, plus very active imaginations!

We played hide and seek, follow the leader, baseball, crack-the-whip and ante-over. Ante-over was my favorite game, (only I think we pronounced it andy-over). We played Fox and Geese when we had a big enough snow.

Behind the pony barns, out in the field just across the fence, there was a wide, deep hole we called the “coal bank.” Someone years before had dug this hole trying to find coal. It usually had a lot of water in it, especially in the winter time. We played there like it was part of the school grounds.

In the spring and fall, on pretty days, we lined up along the road bank to eat lunch from our dinner buckets. We sat by our favorite pal.

Sometimes Mama would hurry around and dress and cook a young fryer for our lunches, or wait for a hen to lay an egg to fry for an egg sandwich. We had no refrigeration for lunch meat, cheese or such; we soon gobbled up a jar of peanut butter.

I soon grew to like going to school. Miss Alma brought a tiny loom and taught me to weave. She brought strips of her father’s old blue chambray shirt and an old sheet for the white stripes of the border. I was the only first grader, so I got her undivided attention and completed both first and second grades that year.

The only scolding I ever got in school was that year. I was sitting in front of Gilbert Smiley; he was probably in the sixth grade; he had caught a fly and impaled it on a pin. The fly was protesting loudly. I had turned around in my seat and was watching the procedure when I forgot and giggled out loud. Miss Alma told me to turn around in my seat; I felt disgraced forever!

—Hazel (Boulware) Johnston