A Little Country School

Today as I opened my facebook page I was happy to see a group of young ladies that I knew many years ago. The picture showed 6 young ladies at their 8th grade graduation in 1960. I know them today as friends and grandmothers.
Where has the time gone and when did we become the older generation. I still have my mother-in-law living in the wonderful Panhandle community but for the most part that generation is gone.

When I moved to this area many years ago as a young bride, we had a lot of neighbors. There were houses on every section and there were still 4 country schools in the area. These schools were mostly 2 room schools and served this rural area. The year before my oldest started to school, the smaller ones closed and my children went to a country school that was 13 miles from our home. Dawn started to first grade there but the next year, they added kindergarten. It had K-8 and had around 60 students most of the time. Some classes had as many as 13 students and some as little as 4.

It was a wonderful little school on the highway and educated my children well. They lacked nothing in education and had band, vocal, sports, and some of the best teachers around. They were challenged to do their best and today I can say that some of the people who passed through have made a difference where they live. There are teachers, college professors, doctors, nurses, meteorologists, geologists, ministers, farmers, ranchers, secretaries, firemen, mechanics, pharmacists, and some are dads, moms and grandparents. I am sure there are a lot of professions that I don't know about but they are people who have made it and they all started at a little country school.

Today, these schools are all empty. Some have been forgotten and sit in disrepair in a sparsely populated land. Some have been revived into community centers and some are used for church functions as well. Where they stand, they are a reminder of what once was. If you look and listen, you can imagine children laughing and playing on the swings out behind and hear the teachers as they start the day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a morning prayer. Wasn't it a grand time?