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North School Revisited

16 August 2008

The North Springfield Old Home Days celebration I attended today was about what I expected. Some yard sale items, a small vegetable table, food, children''s crafts, musicians singing and playing their hearts out in front of the brick warming hut and several volunteers with smiling faces more than eager to talk about the past.

What I didn''t expect was the emotions I felt when I was able to enter the old school building with a tour group. I recalled my years there back in the 60''s when I had attended the first through fourth grades. As we went from room to room, which is now stock piled with unwanted desks, stoves, benches, snow blowers, etc., amidst the clutter, peeling paint and mildew, I recalled days long ago. Sitting there at my desk, remembering which room I had which class in and what teacher had taught that class.

"This is where I sat", Ed Fransen exclaimed as he moved a now tiny desk over by the window. "But this door wasn''t here." His thin frame allowing him to slide into the small chair attached to the desk." I even remember the song Mrs. Thomas taught us to sing." as he started singing the tune aloud. "I don''t believe you actually remember that", I exclaimed. " Well", he said, " my neighbors brother would come home and tell me horror stories about Mrs. Thomas''s various disciplinary actions he had witnessed or heard about. Things like making a boy hold out his hands and her whacking his knuckles hard with a ruler. So through out the year before we started school I would keep hearing about how mean Mrs. Thomas was. I was too young to realize I was just being given a one-sided

view of her. There was no mention of the fact she would only be that way in response to bad behavior in school. So it sounded to me like she just enjoyed making kids suffer."

As we looked at the door that used to lead to the big metal fire escape, I remembered climbing up into it just for fun, and how hot and rusty it was. "I was always extremely scared of that thing", a gentleman said. "There was always someone down at the bottom to catch the girls," our tour guide explained, " so they wouldn''t get their dresses messed up and there seemed to always be a puddle at the bottom." Dug by hundreds of happy feet I would assume.

The cafeteria used to be in the basement. "I used to stand right here and pass out milk," someone said. " You used to slide your tray down through here and get your food". Peeling paintings of children line the now mildew covered cement walls. An old water fountain stands by a lone chair, in front of children''s paintings of animals that look out through faded eyes.

The heavy rains did end up coming that afternoon, fast and furious as they seemed to have been all summer long, but my spirits had been lifted, recalling a time that doesn''t seem that long ago.

I thank Jean Willard and everyone else who has been a part of bringing the North School back to life. You are truly my heroes.

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