Old Martins Creek School
I attended Town Creek Elementary and we had three grades in my classroom. There were four students in first grade, seven in second grade, and 10 in third grade. Our lunch cost was .25 cents. My first teacher was Miss Goldie Collins.
She was never married, did not drive and took the school bus to school. We were permitted to carry pocket knives.
Once me and another boy were playing a game where we stood facing each other and with legs spread shoulder apart and throwing our knives into the ground to the outside of the opponent’s foot. The goal was to keep throwing the knife outside the other’s foot until one person would stretch too far and fall down. Another rule was if you threw the knife between the other’s legs, then that person had to turn around and throw the knife behind him. No girls ever played this game.
One day we were playing this game with Miss Goldie close by. She was sitting on a stoop eating her lunch. She exclaimed, “Boys when you finish that game I want to borrow a knife to peel my apple!” Town Creek was in the Choestoe community and the building is still there.
I remember playing Martins Creek in softball. The team came by way of a bus and with their supporters. I remember that we lost the game. This was around 1963 or 1964.
I rarely got into trouble, but when I did I was offered to stay inside on recess or get a paddling. I always chose a paddling. Recess was too important.
Kids were very inventive. We created pop guns using bamboo and whittled sticks, created huts from bamboo and brush.
—Darrell Cook
I hope you enjoyed Darrell’s memories as much as I do. I especially like the part about Martins Creek School traveling by bus to play softball against his school. Even though that was before I was born I’m sure I knew a few people on the team.
Like Darrell and his fellow students we were very inventive when I was a student at Martins Creek School.
My friends and I loved to use fresh mown grass to make play houses. We’d outline the house with grass right down to the commode!
There was a thicket of sorts in one area of the school grounds. Every year some kids would start playing in it and then more would join them. We’d make trails and hideouts. The teachers let us alone until the fun turned into fighting. At that point they would ban everyone from playing in the thicket but they’d let us do it again the following year. By then the thicket was once again overgrown and we’d have to work at making trails throughout it. Looks like we would have realized that all we had to do was get along to be able to continue playing in the thicket area but we never did.
Last night’s video: Thankful for Toilet Paper in Appalachia.
Tipper
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It may sound backwards but the kids who won’t have what we did growing up have been shorted. There was such a different social atmosphere and we weren’t afraid of one another. To this day I still think what’s the big deal about guns and knives at school. But then I remember I, and most here, were rural or small town folks where people knew, or knew of, each other and knew what to expect of one another. And country kids learned early a pocket knife was a common working tool and not a weapon. You didn’t get one of your own until your parents and/or grandparents felt you were ready. I don’t recall ever cutting myself with a pocket knife, though I probably did. If I did that wasn’t a big deal either. Seems most people are wound too tight these days but the acorns here aren’t, one or two I could mention in particular but they know who they are (grin).
Like Pap, I started school in the ’40s. I’m a few years younger; but from the picture, we had common experiences. I have a photo of my 3rd grade class that very closely resembles today’s picture down to the clothes and posture.
My Pa gave me a Barlow pocket knife when I was 7 years old and taught me how to sharpen it. I carried that knife in my pocket every day for years . . . in and out of school. Later I started carrying smaller Case folding knives to reduce the bulk in my pockets and keep from wearing holes in them.
When I got to high school, I had an old Ford sedan. There were many, many days that I had a shotgun in the car plus shells for whatever I intended to hunt that afternoon. I was not alone; there were many guys who had shotguns or rifles, or both, in their *unlocked* cars. It was a different time.
Randy speculates on what has changed. He is surely right in saying that God is too little in our lives today. Far too few go to church regularly. But, there are other influences that have to be considered.
First is television. I was a teenager before we got a TV. We got our news from radio and newspapers. Voice and print media do not have the same impact as seeing the person delivering the news has. Many local newscasters came to be thought of as friends. The influence of TV was due to that impact, I think, because it requires more attention to both watch and listen. That increased attention soon was exploited, first by advertising then by political and special interest groups who came to control news content.
There is yet another factor that must be considered. In the pre-war era, families rarely moved. People grew up knowing each other most of their lives. In the post-war era, families became much more likely to move. Those moves were often to distant locations that made maintaining close friendships almost impossible. Today, families move on average more frequently than every 5 years. A high percentage of those moves are to other states. Personally, I left Raleigh, my home town, at age 50 to take a much better-paying job in another state. Since then I made another interstate move (to Texas) and have moved within this state 2 more times. That’s migration on a scale unimaginable to my parents’ generation.
Add to that the impact of immigration, and you have to see how our society has been impacted … and not for the better, overall, in my opinion. Yes, my opinion is typical of an old man regretting the loss of youth who remembers the past with rose-colored glasses. The ‘good old days’ were not all good, and all our modern days are not all bad. All in all though, I would gladly give up all things modern (except maybe the Internet and personal computers) to live in the ’50s again.
I’ve just entered my 84th year. I was fortunate enough to grow up in what can only be called “America’s Golden Age”, one that has all but disappeared.
How well I remember my third grade teacher. We began our day with the pledge, a portion of scripture the reader got to choose and a prayer! In public school no less where my mother taught. The students rotated leading each part daily. We may have sung a song as well, not sure.
I really enjoyed Darrell’s childhood school memories as well as yours, Tipper. I think about my own childhood school memories and then my daughter’s and now my granddaughter’s and it kind of makes me sad. Thinking on each different generations school classrooms and recess time is so different with each generation. The classes were smaller, recess was a time of creative imagination and game inventions. My granddaughters generation classes are over crowded and recess is more or less a time to sit out in the sunshine until the teacher gets overheated and moves them inside or looks for shade. Really sad what all the restrictions and lack of actual socialization has done to the younger generations. Our generations had fun, adventures and cherished memories with friends. I just wonder what kind of memories these younger generations will have when they get to be our age?
Oh I remember it so well. Taking grass clippings when my Daddy mowed the lawn. My younger sister and I would make outlines of our dream house. It was so much fun.
MaryKaye, your comment brought back a memory of mine from the second grade, it was of some of us boys pretending to be gathering up hay using the grass clippings after the grass had been cut around our recess area. I also remember taking our cap pistols (no caps) to school and pretending to be cowboys at recess. From the third grade on through the seventh grade the boys played softball at recess all year long, we wouldn’t be allowed to play football.
Yesterday’s and today’s post brought back lots of wonderful memories. We lived in town and I walked all of five blocks to school with lots of other kids from the neighborhood. I remember every one of my grade school teachers and their names, and some of my classmates. I absolutely loved elementary school. Back in the 1950’s we had music and art classes once a week. Spelling bees, trips upstairs to the library, and arts and craft times were my favorites. I can still “smell” the pepperminty odor of white paste in the tub. I loved to learn parts-harmony in music class and we all were excited when the music teacher introduced square dancing. Mrs. Franklin was my third grade teacher who introduced us to the Little House books and read a portion every day after recess, and we all, even the boys, eagerly looked forward to that time. We were thrilled and amazed to learn Laura Ingalls Wilder was still alive at that time! I was very disappointed to learn my mama did not travel in a covered wagon when she was a little girl (grin).
The playground had swings, a slide, jungle gym, and a few other things that have been banned as too dangerous nowadays. Most of us girls also jumped rope and played jacks. The school conducted evaluation tests and I was rated at an eighth grade reading level when I was in fourth grade. Mama saved all my report cards showing straight A’s from first through 6th grade.
I still have my Roy Rogers metal lunchbox and some of the art my mama saved. We lived up north, but when the weather was nice, I would walk home at lunchtime and mama would have soup and a sandwich ready and we would watch Soupy Sales on TV, then I would walk back to school. School started, and still does up north, the day after Labor Day, and we were out for the summer the first week of June. Never had all those extra weeks off like they do now, and I am so glad. Summer brought the bookmobile coming down our street once a week, and I read through all the books available a few times each summer. My friends and I would play house with our dolls on the front porch, or haul everything up an old oak tree and arrange our houses on the branches. Daddy always had a garden, and my summer lunches were typically sitting in between the rows of green beans and tomatoes and strawberries, happily eating whatever I could pick. Dessert was honeysuckle honey!
I won’t go on, but my brain and heart is exploding with the wonderful memories your posts have stirred!
I am LOVING the Martin’s Creek School Tales, Tipper! I especially liked the old maid teacher who took the bus and took it easy as boys were throwing knives at each others feet. You’ll not see those days ever again I can assure you! I liked imagining you and a bunch of pent up in the schoolhouse grade schoolers playing, running, hollering, laughing etc and then a big “ruckus” breaking out to get y’all throwed out of the cool, green thickets til the next year. Sometimes it’s hard to get along yall all the time. Lol Those days won’t happen at school again either will they-of playing in the bushes and fighting yet everybody always makes up and gets by… oh precious memories how they linger. Btw, your NEW school is pretty fancy! Outlining a commode, Tipper, at play? You really are a GIRL… love you so much!!! Sometimes the things you get me to thinking about I thought I forgot is just wonderful really! TIPPER IS WONDERFUL!!!
I always enjoy hearing about ‘olden times’ even though I am old enough now that my childhood is considered those golden oldie years—at least to the younger generations, to me it is still the youth of my parents and grandparents that interest me. The boys playing with their pocket knives reminded me of my brothers always carrying theirs, but today most boys do not carry pocket knives–if they are interested in knives at all it is the big ones — the ones that to me is a little scary in the hands of the young people today. Tipper my favorite ice cream is peach, mama always made it with cream and eggs-maybe a little milk if she was shy on cream. She or I chopped up the peaches in nice bite size chunks, the thing about fruit in our ice cream maker is that most of it settled toward the bottom half so longing for all the peaches I could get in my bowl I made sure everyone else was served before I got my bowl full (I was greedy when it came to peaches). After dishing up eight other bowls of ice cream I had reached the mother lode of peaches for myself lol but not to worry, everyone came back for seconds so they too got to enjoy a bounty of peaches with their ice cream.
1958 Briceville Elementary School in East Tennessee! Some of the best memories are my elementary school days. My 5th grade teacher was Miss Ocie Chadwick. While class was going on she would let me comb her hair, walk to post office for stamps and use the office phone to make her beauty shop appointments!! I think she liked me!!! Mr. Holbrook, our principal and girls basketball coach, always rode on the bus with us to away games. We had the best time singing Elvis songs but one song Mr. Holbrook always requested was “My Lord keeps A Record.” Now that’s an oldie..some of you probably never heard it! In that little coal mining community was the best school ever!
W.T. Moore built Old Martins Creek school and most others in the area including the rock gyms in Hayesville and Murphy. He built Elf school. Also the rock school and gym in Robbinsville. All the bridges on the old Andrews Rd. Also the bridge below Chatuge Dam has a plaque saying “W.T. Moore”. The depression in the 1930’s ended his construction career. His brother owned E.C. Moore Plymouth & Dodge in Murphy.
Hi Tipper!For some reason,it’s not letting me post.
Crystal this one came through hopefully the glitch is fixed 🙂
TY Tipper. Those days were fun. I hope kids today are getting to have outdoor adventures as well.
Randy, please refer to yesterday’s post. I replied to your comment.
Thanks Tipper, an enjoyable read, brought back memories. I started school in 1959, it was much the same as Darrell. I played the pocket knife game as well. I feel sorry for kids today, we’ve substituted a lot of unnecessary rules, replacing good parenting, common sense and most importantly Bible teaching at home and school.
One word today for your comment- ”AMEN.”
Loved the school stories.
Yesterday in my comment, I mentioned boys carrying pockets knives when we went to school, I remember women teachers sometimes asking to borrow a knife from one of us. I also mentioned high school boys that hunted having a rifle or shotgun in their old rattle trap cars if they were lucky enough to even have a car and no one thinking anything about it. Last night’s headlines on three local news stations was about finding a knife on an elementary school student at a school in Pickens County, SC. I guess the student will be expelled for having a knife. I think one sign of getting old is not understanding what is going on anymore, I now find myself saying “I don’t understand more and more often. I don’t understand what has changed the mindset of so many in America.” The only answer I can come up with is much of America has turned their back in God. I also remember in elementary school of saying a classroom blessing before going to lunch or having a morning devotion in the classroom before starting the schooldays. My third grade teacher’s granddaughter became principal of the elementary school school both me and later on my children attended, one year before the school’s Christmas program she telling the audience “ I am told I can no longer pray but I am going to pray anyway.” After she had prayed, the audience clapping their hands because her doing this and nothing being done about it.
That was back when Kids could be healthy and play instead of staying on the cellphones and what knot!!Sounded like loads of fun Tipper!!!Such a joy to read!
My brothers and other boys ( and some girls) always carried pocket knives. Hunting boys had rifles, or shotguns, in the gun holder in their back windows. We never thought a thing about it and you weren’t kicked out of school for it. I still carry a pocket knife if even in my pocket book.
Recess was the highlight of elementary school. I still have the scar on my chin, that looks more like a wrinkle now, where a boy pushed me down in dodgeball. We all survived and had fun. Oh the bangs and bruises that came with freedom at recess. If we got too wild there was sure to be a whistle such as the time a girl fell straight down on her head off the monkey bars. It busted her head wide open and children were screaming her brains were falling out. Everyone came running to see her brain. It was a serious injury ( no brains were laying out), but looking back now I giggle thinking about it.
Thank you for reminiscing and reminding us of our past too. Such good memories and some hard ones. I lost my best friend at the age of 14 to a gun accident with other classmates. The young man who accidentally shot her lives across the field from me and carries a very heavy weight to this day. We may not know what the day may hold, but we know Who holds the day. He brings each new day and holds us in His palms through the good and bad. God is good!
Blessings to all!!