School Days

[Wilma]

This didn't happen in Elk County or surrounding area, but it could have.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, my school gave programs or entertainments.  Because of the small enrollment, there were several grades to a room and each room would take a turn at presenting an entertainment to which the whole school, (grade school and high school) and any adults who wished were invited.  These were given on a Friday afternoon as a culmination of a week of hard study.

At this time the 7th and 8th grades were in one room under one teacher and it was our turn to entertain.  Someone had the unique idea of having a mock wedding and I was chosen to be the groom.  Probably because at the age of 13, I was straight up and down and had no curves and the boy that was chosen to be my bride had more curves than I did.  With a brother on each side of me, there was no problem about clothes, pants, shirt, jacket or even a necktie.  I don't know where they came up with clothes for the bride as he didn't have any sisters.

The irony of this was that the boy that was to be my bride was an irritant in my life.  He was always so close behind me in everything that I had to work to stay ahead of him.  But there were two things he could do better than I could.  One was tie a necktie.  To make matters worse, he offered to tie mine for me.

Now neither of us were very enthusiastic about doing this.  We had to walk down the center aisle through the audience and everybody was just roaring, especially the high school boys.  It wasn't so bad for me, I was half boy anyway.  But my bride, I am sure, was wishing he had never agreed to do this and I really don't know why he did.  We got through it and everybody agreed it was a success.  We never did become good friends.  I have no idea where he is now, but our parents are buried in the same small cemetery not very far from each other.

What was the other thing he could do better than me?  He could make a hip roofed barn and I still can't do one and make it look good.

[Wilma]

                                           The Hip Roofed Barn

Back in the good old days? 8th graders studied Agriculture.  One of our assignments was to draw a layout of a farm  This had to include the homestead, outbuildings, barn lots, fields, etc.  BORRRRRRING!!!!

This I could do in ten minutes.  Looking for a bigger challenge, I decided that a drawing wasn't enough, it would be a model of a farm, including a model house, model barn, model windmill, model fences.  Toothpicks were used for the fences and windmill.  The house was a little upside down box with a peaked roof.  When the rest of the class saw what I was doing, they wanted to be part of it and the project soon turned into a class project instead of the the individual drawings that the teacher had assigned.  The teacher was wise enough to not object.  Since most of us had farm backgrounds, there wasn't much we could be taught about the layout of a farm, anyway.

Everything went fine until it came to the barn.  My slightly larger than the house, upside down box with a peaked roof wasn't good enough.  It didn't look good enough to me either.  This irritating, couldn't keep up with me, boy classmate of mine, took over.  He produced a bigger barn with a hip roof.  I still haven't figured out how he did it, but it looked really good, just like the one on the farm where they lived.  Someone even had miniature farm animals that we used to stock the barn yard and pastures.

The whole project was a success.  Besides showing the teacher that we knew what a farm was, we showed her that we had initiative and could work successfully as a group.  I might add that we weren't under the direct supervision of the teacher.  She had sent us to another room to work on the projects and we had several class periods to complete it. 

[Janet Harrington]

Mother.  I'm just wondering if there are any pictures of you dressed as a groom?

[Wilma]

No.  I owned the camera and I didn't take any pictures.  I don't think any of my friends had a camera.  Mine was a box Kodak.  And I did too have friends.