Once upon a time
John Schlageck, Special to the Gazette
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The school I attended for the first eight years of my life was located in western Sheridan County.
The name of the community was Seguin, population 50. It was a German-Catholic community. Heck, we didn’t have a “non Catholic” in our two-room school until I was in the sixth grade.
Our school was different than the typical one-room country school. While mostly made of wood, the structure had a stucco coating on the exterior. Seguin Grade School Students didn’t have a bell tower. Students took turns calling us to class, announcing recess and signaling the end of the school day by ringing a large, handheld brass bell with a black wooden handle.
The Sisters of St. Joseph provided us with a solid foundation during our early years or education. The main subjects included reading, writing, arithmetic and English. The last subject was one I enjoy even to this day. I especially liked to diagram sentences on the blackboard (and they were black) when I wrote as neatly as I could with a piece of long, white chalk.
Throughout my eight years in Seguin, enrollment at my two-room school never exceeded 35 students. I can’t remember a class with more than five children.
As a youngster and throughout my 18 years of education, I was a sponge — absorbing everything. Learning and listening always came naturally for me. Although I don’t think it hurt that our teachers were strict. In fact, talking in class resulted in an automatic ticket to the cloakroom, or time spent at the chalkboard after school.
One of my favorite periods during my formative years at Seguin was the 15-minutes immediately following lunch. That’s when one student was selected to read aloud from a book from our extensive library.
Don’t scoff about the number and quality of books that might have been found in our small, rural northwestern Kansas community so many years ago. The book I picked out during my fifth year in Seguin was “Lorna Doone” by R.D. Blackmore. This was the first book I couldn’t put down and I have read it several times since.
The next best thing to reading was recess. What youngster would ever argue with that?
We enjoyed three periods which included approximately one hour of playtime each day. We played games called circle, pom-pom pole away, fox and geese, Annie, Annie Over and of course every one of us turned into a monkey on the steel playground equipment.
Life was good. Things were simpler. Time moved much slower in our little two-room school back in the mid ’50s.
F John Schlageck is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.