School

My first taste of school was at the local village primary school. For the first four years I was taught by a kind lady who was very close to retiring. She was more a mother to her students than a teacher. She always made sure we were warm and if it was raining when we arrived to school, she took our coats and hung them to dry in front of the coal stove in the room. It was a two teacher, two room school. We learned to write with pencils and ink. The ink was in “ink wells” on the desks. We drank as much ink as we used I think,lol. She was a very religious woman and each morning we all knelt down to say prayers before starting class. It was in those years I brought my first “girl-friend” home. We have a farm and Daddy kept some pigs. One of the sows had a litter of piglets and I was allowed to stay with him as each little pig was born. On the way home from school the next day I asked a classmate if she would like to see something really great. She walked up the lane to my house and I took her over to the shed where the pigs were. I showed her the sow and little pigs. She did not share my enthusiasm, to put it mildly!
The last four years in primary school I spent under the tutelage of the “master”. He was very different from my first teacher. He gave us a good a foundation as he could in Maths and English. I remember he smoked cigars which came in a little metal box. As a prize he would give us the empty boxes. We were very proud to get those “trophies”. At the age of twelve I finished my education in the village school. The master shook our hands as we left the classroom for the last time and wished us all well .
I may post some more stories from the village school before I go on to my secondary school experiences . Bye for now.