Barrie Qualle mug

While cowboying out on the Zumwalt the past few years, I have ridden up on several old abandoned homesteads and thought of the hardships and shattered dreams of the folks that tried to make a go of it in this wild land. What have brought back the most memories though are the remains of several old one-room schools scattered around the prairie.

While a kid in Saskatchewan I had the privilege of attending one of these bastions of learning, Beverley School SD 1172. Beverley School consisted of one room over a full basement with two outhouses and a school barn where a lot of non-curriculum education was dispensed.

The school was basically the center of the community. It served not only as the center of education for the youth of the community; it was also where the meetings and social events were held. More than one wedding was held in it and countless Saturday night dances. Wheat pool meetings and political rallies were regularly scheduled along with weekend afternoon ball games and picnics. An occasional movie was shown after a meeting and the annual oratorical contests were a part of the duties of the old one-room building.

The teachers came and left. Some to be snapped up and married by a bachelor farmer or maybe driven out for having been careless enough to be caught smoking, drinking or some other indiscretion.

When in session, the total population of the school might reach 30. The total enrollment rarely attended, depending on the season. Older kids were often held out to work and weather or road condition might affect attendance. The lower grades might each have five or six kids and the higher the grade, the fewer the students.

The lone teacher would assign the upper classes to read and begin with the lower classes and as she got one class started, she would move on to the next class and work with them. When you finished your work, you were to work on the lesson or sit and listen to what was going on with whichever class the teacher was working. By afternoon the teacher would be working with the upper classes, usually the seventh or eighth grade, and if it was literature it made pretty good listening.

The law required that a kid had to complete the eighth grade or be 16. This was not strictly enforced and a lot of the kids through poor attendance or bad genetics failed to pass to the next grade. As a result, some kids were as much as three or four years older than an on-schedule classmate. Most of them learned to read and write and do basic math. Some made the 16th year and quit without experiencing the eighth grade and the joy of reading Les Miserables. It seemed that the Mennonites, the Bohunks and the Métis were held out to work the most and were the least interested in learning. As a result they were usually the largest kids in their grade.

One of the Métis kids was in my class and was probably more Indian than white. Ernies attendance was sporadic at best. When spring came and the weather improved it was not uncommon for Ernie to fade off into the prairie on the way to school. You could see him and his three sisters walking toward the school in the morning from about a mile away. If it was a particularly nice day it was often too much for him and he would peel off and head for a coulee south of the school. Here he spent the day snaring ground squirrels or otherwise entertaining himself.

The teacher would send the bigger boys out to try and catch Ernie at recess and during the noon hour, never successfully. Ernie could see them coming and even if he was caught in the open, he somehow could hide and remain undetected. I think he must have crawled down badger holes sometimes to hide. After a day or two the teacher would trek out to where he lived and have the parents deliver Ernie to school for a while.

The teacher dared not let him out at recess or noon as he was sure to take off and run away. For several days Ernie would Indian-up and refuse to talk or answer questions. No amount of ear-twisting or threats of being strapped could break him. The weather would change and Ernie would begin attending on a regular basis. He finally developed some interest in school and I remember hearing the teacher confide to Ernie, We have a lot of catching up to do.

Open Range columnist Barrie Qualle is a working cowboy in Wallowa County.