Recently, in a nostalgic moment, I spent some time remembering my first year of school. That was the 1959 - 1960 school year. At the time my parents and I lived in a small, log cabin at a forestry tower at Spring Knob. The tower is long gone now as is about two hundred feet of the hill top due to it being strip mined. It is all gone down to the level of the big rock which marked the beginning of the path over the hill which lead to the homes of our nearest neighbors. Sad, really, how many places I recall from my childhood which no longer exist thanks to strip mining of coal.
Due to our remote location my brother would drive me to my grandparent's house on Sundays where I would spend the school week then drive me back to Spring Knob on Friday nights. I was born to older parents so my grandparents were of the "older persuasion" as well. Best I can figure my grandfather was born in 1882. That would have made him almost eighty when I was in the first grade. Seventy six or seventy seven? He was still fairly active at that time.
While we were remote at Spring Knob, where my grandparents lived was not exactly urban. At that time the county road in front of their house was in the creek. Actually, quite a bit of the county roads in that area were in different creek beds. So, to get from my grandparent's house to the school house I had to walk the foot path around the hill down to where the county road came out of the creek for a short ways. Then over the smaller forks of the creek (called branches) and through an old barn in an abandoned field. The county road had once again gone into the creek so we had to detour to where it came back onto dry land. Then down past the old Blessing house (Blessing was the family who lived there and not a religious thing.) to another old field, across the foot log (Yes, someone had just cut a tree and let it fall across the creek to use as a foot bridge.) and up another small branch, through the barbed wire fence and across a completely abandoned road to the one-room school.
The school stood in a gap between Patrick creek and Nat's creek. All the children from the Nat's creek side were my cousins. I really never knew any of the kids form the other side of the gap except at school.
One teacher (Mrs. Cooper) taught all eight grades in that one room. Being over half a century ago now I cannot recall the real size of the class and all the kids who might have attended. Especially those from the Patrick side of the gap. I think there were five or six of my cousins of various ages and myself from the Nat's creek side, four to six kids of one family who lived a good ways on up Nat's creek from my grandparent's and several kids from the Patrick side. I'm going to say there were no more than ten to fifteen kids who attended that school that year.
Mrs. Cooper (the teacher) lived in the small, log cabin up the creek from my grandparent's house. It was the house where I had been born when my parents lived there. I don't remember too much about her except she was pretty young and her husband owned a jeep which he used to drive her to as close as one could get a vehicle to the school every morning. I don't recall if he picked her up at night. I cannot remember ever actually seeing the man. I just knew he existed.
I believe that was the only year of school I truly enjoyed. That is for several non-related reasons. On the other hand it was one of the real beginnings of my personal isolation which continues to this day. In my early years it was imposed on me and now I would not know any other way to live.
The first reason I really loved school that year was the fact all eight grades were taught in the same room every day. I believe that is a superior way of teaching to what more "civilized" areas had and have where we segregate the kids into grades in separate rooms and teachers instruct only the subjects and subject level deemed appropriate for that grade. I spent every day hearing material from the first grade level through the eighth grade level. I paid attention.
I think I learned a lot from that and I know I developed a love for knowledge. I also found subject matter deemed appropriate for my grade was mind-numbingly boring. I found I learned things much faster than the other kids in the first grade as well. First grade bored me so my favorite part of the school day was when Mrs. Cooper was teaching the older kids.
Finding school boring was something which continued all the way through high school. I came to hate going to school. Not because I found it too difficult but because it was boring. As well as some other reasons I won't go into at this time. But, back to the first grade.
In fact, I bragged to my teacher I would make nothing but As in school. She had the last laugh on me but it took a while to appreciate the humor in it. I did make all As in school except for one B. In "effort". (Yes, we did get graded for effort in those days.) I find that quite amusing now. The fact is should she have given me a real grade for effort I would have gotten all Fs. I never did give much effort in school. It was so easy I didn't need to.
The second reason I found that year so enjoyable was because of the way my grandparents coddled me like I was something fragile. I did have to walk a good ways to and from school so if it was raining, snowing, too cold or they thought it might rain or snow I was made to stay home instead of going to school. So, my first grade year was about sixty percent going to school and forty percent staying home and playing in the yard.
The third reason that year was so enjoyable was the absence of my parents in it. I did not realize it at the time, of course. Life with my parents was not very enjoyable. Also, something I will not go into at this time. Just say all my life I've always been happiest when they were not around.
The last reason is that was the only year of school where I felt "included" rather than isolated and alone. Games of tag and kick the can at recess and lunch, having one of the older kids take me with him to walk down to my uncle and aunt's house to get a bucket of drinking water from their well, just being treated like I was welcome there. It was great.
In that part of Kentucky the one-room school was not all that rare in rural areas. In fact there were two open on my bus ride to the "city" school up through the time I graduated from high school in 1972.
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