The remembrances of Richard Horstmann

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.

Richard Horstmann

Richard Horstmann was born in Gillett, Arkansas, and moved to the Westboro, Missouri, area in 1920. He married Freda Weber in 1929 in Westboro. Richard was a veteran of WWII and worked for the McColl Lumber Co., Westboro. He was active in the community, a member of St. John’s Lutheran Church, and served with the Merrill Smith American Legion Post #32 and the Hudson-Essex Terraplane Organization (Hudson and Essex were automobiles that have ceased manufacture). Richard owned a Hudson car. He is buried at St. John’s Lutheran Church Cemetery. This is his story:

Dear Fifth and Sixth Graders,

I’m not a writer, but will try and tell you a few of the things that happened to me the first few days of my school days.

It must have been in 1912 when I first went to school. They were building a new schoolhouse for us, but it wasn’t finished yet as school started, so we had to go to the old schoolhouse for three days. That old schoolhouse was built of logs, so my first few days of school was in a log schoolhouse. That schoolhouse was out in the country close to Gillett, in Arkansas County.

The school faced south and so did the new school. My desk was next to the window on the east side, and on the east side of the school was a rice field. The farmer was just starting to cut the rice and the first round was made with a binder that was pulled with oxen. I don’t know why they used oxen for the first round. There must have been about 25 in our school up to the 8th grade. We had reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history and language. I don’t remember belonging to a club.

My clothes were all homemade. Of course, for Sunday I had a pair of knee pants. Our meals included mostly meat, potatoes, eggs, milk, vegetables, and honey. We raised all of that right on our farm, plus all kinds of fruit.

Our house had six rooms, three on the east side and three on the west side with a big hall in the center. We did have water in the house. There were eight in our family. My father, mother, three sisters, and my grandparents. The only holiday that I remember was the 4th of July. Then we would get the old horse and buggy out and go to town for a few hours. Then we came home and I would have to go get the cows and help milk, get in enough wood so that Mother could get breakfast and that we could keep warm through the night. For entertainment, I was kept busy around the house, but I did have a bicycle.

Sincerely,

Richard Horstmann