Early Schools Index

School days, school days …

From BILL McCUTCHEON

With school just barely underway, I visited Wayne Webb at his Mansfield home to look at his extensive (a real understated word) collection of photographs, particularly those of schools in Henry County.

These are just a few of them. I then found this poem on the Internet site at www.poetryfromtheheart.com/school.html that seemed to fit so well .

No, I never attended a one-room school but my first grade classes were in a school that is also no longer around: Atkins-Porter Elementary here in Paris.

One Room School

There’s an old school house still standing
That holds sweet memories
A one room that’s weather beaten now
But in my mind I can see

At recess we played ball and base
Shot marbles when it was cold
It would take a hundred books
To write the memories I hold

A pot bellied stove in the center
Produced very little heat
If you sit real close you burned up
All except your freezing feet

There were two to four in each class
Grades from one to eight
You were marked as tardy
If you were one minute late

My lunch was cornbread and milk
In Granny’s canning jar
I always tried to hover near
And eat beside the fire

I walked two miles to get there
But I learned my three “R’s” well

Were good teachers in those days
They cared and you could tell

If you disobeyed or talked back
Did one thing out of the way
The old paddle seemed to appear
And the devil was to pay

Kids didn’t carry guns back then
We had a great old time
We knew to mind our teachers
And our parents all the time

We had two outside privies
For the ladies and the gents
It was a cold trip in the winter
Sometimes you wished you hadn’t went

An old hand pump outside the door
You had to pump the water out
With our paper drinking cups
We’d hold them under the spout

Good old days they were back then
We were as poor as we could be
But I didn’t know the difference
The rest was poor as me.
— Raylene Boggs

Reprinted from
The PARIS POST-INTELLIGENCER
PARIS, TENNESSEE
August 22, 2007 Edition