By Beverly Clinkingbeard

In 1981, Betsy Chapin was teaching the fifth and sixth graders at Westboro Elementary School in Westboro, Missouri. The pupils were given the assignment of asking a senior citizen, their grandparents or a friend, to write an essay of what their school days were like. Those who were asked were in school at a time when essay/story writing and penmanship were a part of their curriculum. As a result, their remembrances were well articulated and the handwriting quite legible or type written. In the coming weeks, their experiences will be shared. Thank you, Betsy, and thank you to the contributors, now deceased, for sharing their yesterday experiences.

Glacie Collins

Glacie Collins was born in 1902 on a family farm in Vernon County, Missouri, and grew up in Cedar County, Missouri, with two sisters and one brother. She married Edd Collins in 1920. They resided for brief periods in Wyoming and California, eventually settling in southwest Iowa and Northwest Missouri, moving to Atchison County in 1932. Their farm was in the Eureka School District. Glacie was known for her cheerful spirit and community service, especially in the Westboro Methodist Church.  This is Glacie’s story:

“I was born on a farm near Montevello, Missouri, in 1902. Our house had a stone fireplace for heat and a wood and coal stove for cooking. We lived there until just before I had to start school. They sold that farm and bought another 1/4th mile from same school. Dad built a new house. It had a kitchen and dining room together, a living room, a parlor and one bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. It had a large front porch as well as a back porch, each with cement floors. We used wood to cook and coal to heat the house. Kerosene lamps for lighting. We did the washing with a tub and washboard. We ironed everything with irons heated on the cook stove, churned our butter in a stoneware churn with a dash. Our water was drawn from our well with a bucket, rope and pulley. Our butter, milk and eggs were lowered in the well to keep cool. There were buckets to put it in to lower [and retrieve]. We had no refrigeration. Our ‘John’ was an outside one. We took our bathes in the wash tub. We heated the water on the cook stove in the winter time and heated it outside in summer time.

We had a big garden and raised all kinds of vegetables.  Also, there were apples, peaches, plums, grapes and wild blackberries. We kids helped with the house work, garden and lawn. We also milked the cows when Dad was in the field and helped with milking when he wasn’t. We picked up cobs for starting fires (in the heater and cook stove).

Our school was a rural school house—one room with a large pot-bellied stove in the center for heat. The teacher taught grades one through eight. Sometimes there was as high as 45 boys and girls in attendance. Our subjects were arithmetic, reading, penmanship, spelling, physiology, geography, agriculture and English in the upper grades. We had spelling bees with other schools and also ‘ciphering matches.’ We had no clubs, but we played blackman, redline, stinkbase and baseball. If there was snow, we coasted down the hills on homemade sleds or played fox and goose in the snow. Two of us would go for drinking water a half mile away.

When we were through the grades, we attended high school in Jerico Springs, Missouri. We walked three miles our first year. We rode in a buggy drawn by one horse parts of the next year, then rented a room in town and did light housekeeping.

We had no selective subjects at high school. We had English, math, history, civil government and agriculture. We had advanced math, algebra and geometry in upper grades. We had no competitive games, but did have some baseball and basketball at the school house. We took our lunch. There was no hot lunch at either school.

We wore mostly cotton dresses at home and at school. We had one good wool dress in the winter time and also wore long underwear if snowy or very cold. We wore buttoned leggings and low overshoes. In the summer time we had two and maybe three dress-up dresses we wore to church and Sunday School. They were knee length when we were in high school and the hem just below the knee. The rural schools had pie and sometimes box suppers. The girls took the food and the boys bought it at an auction. Then we ate together. We also attended neighborhood parties for kids our ages. We had singing, dancing games, spin the bottle, guessing games, etc., and post office.

I forgot about our shoes – Sunday shoes, school shoes and everyday shoes. We wore lots of ribbons in our hair in elementary school.

We had our mother and father, three girls and a boy in our family. We were farmers. We always had a dog and cats for pets and sometimes some pigs and once in a while a calf.  We rode horses bareback and the neighborhood boys and girls would get together and all rode horses. No one had a saddle.

We attended basket dinners at the church and Christmas programs and the programs at the country school house. The annual picnic at Jerico Springs lasted two or three days. The Eldorado Springs, Missouri, picnic was annual also and usually three days. That was three big highlights in our lives. We usually took basket dinners to the picnics. Neighbors would get together, put a blanket on the grass and put our food on it. We’d sit around it and eat.

We girls had some small dolls and sewing baskets. Our brother had a teddy bear and made sleds and a steel wagon for all four of us. We always had oranges and candy for Christmas and usually got new clothes. Oh yes, we always got nuts and some books.

My mother was a good seamstress and a good cook. My father was a good provider. We butchered our own hogs. The neighbors helped each other. We heated water in a large black iron kettle, set the kettle on some rocks or bricks and made a fire under it. We scalded the hogs soon after they were killed and scraped off the hair. Then cut them up. We rendered the lard and made sausage – cleaned some of the intestines and stuffed part of the sausage in them. We fried the sausage and put it in stone jars and glass jars and poured hot lard over it to keep the sausage.

This same black kettle was used for making applebutter and laundry soap, as well as heating water and rendering lard. In the summer time, the wash water was heated in it. The hams, shoulders and sides of hogs were sugar cured. They were allowed to completely cool off before putting in the cure. Usually, they were put in 20-30 gallon stone jars for curing. It took around six weeks then we smoked it and it was then ready for consumption and was so good. Mother raised chickens and hatched the eggs under setting hens. We had coups to put one hen and 25-30 baby chickens in. She had several hens and baby chicks at the same time. We ate a lot of fried chicken in the summer time and all kinds of vegetables from the garden. We always had black eyed peas and made our hominy out of the field corn. We dried our sweet corn and always dried a lot of apples.

Dad dug holes in the garden and lined it with straw. He’d put turnips in one, apples in another, cabbage in another and potatoes in another. He’d put the straw over each and put dirt on top and they kept nicely until used up.

We always had meat, potatoes and gravy at dinner and supper. Other foods that went with that may be green beans, peas, sauerkraut, cooked cabbage, sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, dry beans and lima beans. We always had fruit, pie or cake. We drank water and milk. We had wilted lettuce in season. My mother always picked wild greens in the early spring. We never bought bread, as Mother made it – light bread, rolls, biscuits, cornbread, crackling cornbread or muffins. We didn’t eat many snacks between meals. Hot bread out of the oven with butter was the greatest snack ever. We always had apples to eat also. We had a coffee grinder and ground coffee beans for the little bit of coffee used. Mother made our sauerkraut. She put it in a 20 gallon stoneware jar. It was so good to go to the jar and take out what was needed.

Neighbor families had Sunday dinners together in the summer time as there were too many children for our houses in the winter time. The adults always ate first and we kids later. The kids were always playing games outside.

My mother did all of the sewing for the family – all of our dresses and under things and the men’s shirts. My father played with us kids more than my mother, but she always read stories to us. We were taught to respect our elders and other people’s property, as well as our own. There was no swearing, drinking liquor, nor smoking in our family.

Thinking of each of you.

Love, Glacie Collins