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George Rice remembers Jericho 'University' The Knot on a tree contains more memories than a flash drive. Taking a picture of the tree brought back vivid memories, of so many facets of school boy days many decades ago, and of the teachers: It is and should be expedient to remember with praise those teachers of those one room schools that spent many years of their lives educating the young people of that time. It is with tribute that I remember these teachers of my school years. Mr. Rollin Kemp, Miss Daisy Corbin, Miss Dorothy Pickett, Miss Libby Lee Knifley Rogers, Mrs. Eulah Schuler, Mrs. Bessie Rice, Miss Francis Banks and there was another teacher that didn't stay all year. Maybe I was just too much for her nerves. GEORGE RICE remembers. Click on headline for complete story with photo(s) By George Rice Most people would call this just a knot on a tree but this is THE KNOT ON A TREE. This knot contains more memories than a flash drive. As I stood at the base of this old white oak tree located on the prior ground of the Jericho University my thoughts began to reminiscence in living color the many years and the hundreds of school children that played around that old tree. That knot is the remains of a large limb that a swing once hung on. When I was a boy, as all old men always starts every sentence with, our school took some money from a pie supper and bought two chains and make a wooden seat that make a swing that hung from that limb. Pieces of those chains remained embedded in that limb until the Charity Baptist Church build a pavilion under that limb requiring the limb to be cut off and that knot is all that remains of the swing limb. But that knot contains many more memories. There was those pie suppers that all country school had once a year that would draw huge crowds. Games were played with rewards, cold pop was sold from a wash tub full of ice, there was a sheet stretched at on corner of the room and lots of surprised attached to a fishing pole that cost probably 10 or 15 cents to fish over the sheet and people behind the sheet would attach a surprise to it. Then the high light of the night was when the pies were auctioned. The tradition was for girls of the community to bring a pie and the high bidder got to eat the pie with the girl. Boys and men would bid against one another and sometimes these auctions created a scene and even ill feelings. Mother and Sister Margie prepped me to be ready for school There was so many memories of that school. I remember sooo well when my Mother and Sister Margie began to tell me that I got, like it was a big deal, to go school this year. They make it to sound as if it was a great chance of total fun and I believed them. There was new clothes and shoes and a lunch box with a thermos bottle bought for that great first day. I had a note book with a pencil and eraser. I soon learned what the eraser was for. From my house which was located at the present fishing pier at Holmes Bend Dock it was one mile to school all uphill. It had been arranged for me to meet my cousins Leon, Leonard, Garnet, and Gordon Bault at the top of the hill along with many other boys and girls that I didn't know all walking to school. So Little George, I was named after my Father George, was off to school. We were all lined up and marched in. They said the pledge to the flag, I just stood there, and I was assigned a seat. So the first day of school was started. Now the teacher asked me to come up by her desk. I didn't like this idea but I get up and go forward. Again she ask what I wanted and again I said how do you spell CAT. Now she turns to my cousin Leon and ask him what I was saying and he didn't know. By now I wished I'd stayed in my seat or even better stayed at home. So I told the teacher never mind I already knew and got back in my seat. If she had told me how to spell cat I couldn't have written it down. Spelling seemed to have plagued me for many years to come. Even till this day. I had good parents who wanted me to be educated. One night my Daddy had me in his lap trying to help me with my spelling. He would spell something and give me a hint and I would guess at what it was. Now a few days before I had followed Daddy to a field near the river and got some corn for cooking. Sitting in Daddy's lap he spelled FISH and began to give me hints. I couldn't come up with the right answer and finally Daddy said we go to the river and get them. I SAW THE LIGHT and I beamed out ROASTING EARS. Right now I'm reliving Daddy picking me up from his lap and setting me down with disgust and he was through helping me with spelling. But I finally did learn a few things and began to read some. The teacher would have us to take turns reading out loud so once I had memorized a page and I was a very proud boy when it was my turn to read so I proudly announced that I could read looking out the window which I proudly did. I am now eighty one years old and Lois Bault is a little older and she still tells laughingly how I looked out the window and read my lesson. Games had improvised equipment, like a plank for a bat Now years would come and go and memories of that school, even cherished memories, linger on. There were those games of hide and seek, annie over the school house, ball games, we never had a real ball bat, didn't need one, we used a plank two or three inches wide and sometimes we would hit the ball all the way from the road to the school house and that would merit a home run. But the greatest playing was in the woods below the school house. All the boys had stick horses and we would hitch them by the school and at recess we would race to our mounts and head to the woods and yes we had switches to switch those stick horses with. We were good cowboys and bad cowboys and we would have a sheriff to catch the bad ones and we would have jail with guards. What a life!! And then there were those stick cars. A stick car would be a stick about twelve or fourteen inches long with a fork on one end that we would squeeze for the gas and we could burn rubber. Then there were those cars that we drove home and back to school the next day. This consisted of a steel ring about twelve inches in diameter that came off the hub of a farm wagon. We would either have a tobacco stick with a u shape metal on the end that we would use to push the ring or we would have a stiff wire with a curve in the end which would fit on the inside of the ring and guide it along. The bell sent scholars to outhouses No school was a school without those outhouses. There was one for the boys and one for the girls. They would be located some distant apart, I think there was a reason for that. As I'm standing here looking at that knot on that tree I can still smell those outhouses but if they didn't smell they wouldn't be a outhouse. Now at the end of the recess the teacher would ring the bell and that wasn't a ring to start class again it was a ring to race to the outhouse. The girls racing to the girls outhouse and the boys to the boys outhouse. Now the girls would go in their outhouse but the boys always went to the back side and peed through the cracks. Sometimes if it was necessary for a boy to do number two he had to go inside and once he was in and the door closed it was time to throw rocks. And the bombing would begin. Woods behind Jericho University was never-ending challenge for boys At the Jericho University the school yard was between the school and the road but the play ground extended into the wooded area below the school that was a never ending challenge for the boys. One challenge was to see how high we could climb a tree and then get down. Then we learned to climb the smaller trees and ride them over. Sometimes they would ride over and sometimes they would break and sometimes they would do neither. Then there was that grape vine swing. Any one that has never swung on a grapevine swing has missed something that can't be described. No other swing has ever been equal to it. We had this grapevine swing that swung over a deep holler. It was a big grapevine and swung from high in the tree. We had tied a rope to the grapevine with a loop to set a foot in. Once the rider was attached to the vine with his foot in the loop he was pulled as far backward and given a push and he would be headed for space over the holler. That swing lasted for a long time until one day when my cousin Walter Ewing Rice was up for the next ride. Now Walter was a little heaver than others but he had been riding the swing. This time Walter is up for the next ride and we had tied another rope to the bottom end of the swing and we all pulled him backward up hill as far as we could and gave him a shove. He goes higher and higher and then the grapevine broke and Walter goes down into the holler out of sight. We were all scared that he would be dead so we go racing to the top of the holler and there laid Walter on top a brush pile unhurt. But that was the end of the grapevine swing. Bases of those huge oaks were always good eating places Those lunch boxes deserve lots of good memories.They to had a smell that lingers on and on. It was always a challenge to find some unusual places to eat. The base of those huge oak trees still standing in the Charity Baptist Church were always good eating places. Once some timber cutters cut some trees in the woods below the school and we would find great eating places in those tree tops. One tree top had a limb that extended about ten or twelve feet high with another fork in it and that upper level became a place to sit high and eat dinner. Many times the other lunches would look better than my own and so did the others and many times we would trade food. Got hang of making bicycle go, but not how to stop it It was on this school yard that I had my first bicycle ride. Some timber cutters had left some logs near the road within the school yard and that to became a play ground. One day while playing on those logs a local boy Bill Renfro rode his bicycle by and stopped. We were all setting on the logs and I was admiring Bill bicycle. He offered to let me ride it which I was thrilled to do so. Now I had never ridden a bicycle but I get astraddle that bike and some how I get it started. I make a circle around the yard and head back to the log pile and discover I don't know how to stop it so I run Bill's bicycle into the logs. It stopped. And Bill was very unhappy with me. If any of the younger generation should read this they will probably think how sad that he didn't have a cell. phone to text with but we didn't need to text. We had our imagination. It is and should be expedient to remember with praise the teachers It is and should be expedient to remember with praise those teachers of those one room schools that spent many years of their lives educating the young people of that time. It is with tribute that I remember these teachers of my school years. Mr. Rollin Kemp, Miss Daisy Corbin, Miss Dorothy Pickett, Miss Libby Lee Knifley Rogers, Mrs. Eulah Schuler, Mrs. Bessie Rice, Miss Francis Banks and there was another teacher that didn't stay all year. Maybe I was just too much for her nerves. This story was posted on 2015-05-16 06:35:39
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