Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. It was a bittersweet sound. The ringing of the school bell signaled the end of summer. The days were becoming shorter and cooler, and you could feel fall in the air. Colorful wildflowers were disappearing. Another summer was heading south for the winter and leaving us behind.
As we walked to school that first day, the wind rushing through the cornfields sounded like the drum rattle as a prisoner was being marched to his execution. It was nice to see our classmates again, but it was like heading back to prison after spending three months, running free, in the great outdoors.
Howard – First Day of School
Such a sad, forlorn look? Uff da!
As farm kids, we’d been working all summer long on the farm. It wasn’t really a vacation, but we were outside in the sun and fresh air. It wasn’t like being “imprisoned” in a school for most of the day. We still had to help with chores before and after school, but that was different. During the summer, we had been hauling hay, stacking bales in the haymow, planting tobacco, replanting, hoeing, and topping tobacco, helping with the grain harvest, doing chores every morning and night, which included feeding the hogs and chickens, and gathering the eggs each day. Of course, we got to help with the milking too. There wasn’t a lot of free time and yet we still had time to do kid stuff. I don’t remember ever saying I was bored because there was nothing to do. Today, many kids say they are bored and yet they have more toys and gadgets to play with than we ever dreamed of. Maybe they need some work to do and responsibilities, and less time playing video games, watching TV, and talking or texting on their cell phones.
We didn’t have much of a social life either. Our social outing was the 4-H club meeting each month, where we saw most of our school classmates. 4-H got us involved in outside activities, away from the farm. We found time to teach a new heifer or cow to lead so we could show her at the Vernon County Fair. There were also 4-H softball games on Sunday afternoons, where our Seas Branch Smithies played other 4-H clubs. There were occasional social activities among the 4-H clubs of Vernon County. I remember dances where most of us guys were too shy to ask a girl to dance. Thank goodness for square dances where the caller would pair girls and boys up. That forced us to dance and we even found out it was fun to square dance, as long as we didn’t have to ask a girl to dance and have her reject our invitation. That was embarrassing and did nothing for a person’s self-esteem when you had very little of it to begin with.
Some evenings we even found time for the Prairie Ghosts to go adventuring on our bikes around the countryside. That was our secret club that I organized with the help of my brother David. It included some of our neighbor friends. I was the Commanding 4-Star General, of course, since I came up with the idea for the club. Most of those growing up years included my cousin, Sandy, who stayed with us during summer vacations and got to share in all the work and adventures. Going back to school also signaled the end of her stay with us, and that added to the feeling of loss at the end of summer when she left.
You’d think with having to work all summer, we’d have been happy to go back to school and get a little rest. I’ll say again, it was bittersweet. I liked school, especially the last couple years at Smith. Miss Fredrickson made school and learning fun. I think the majority of students had a great experience at our little one-room school, especially while she was our teacher, but there was something special about spending the summers outdoor on a farm when you’re young. I know it gave me an appreciation for the outdoors and for nature.
Back to school for us farm kids was a mixed blessing, because it was also tobacco harvesting time. We never got out of helping with tobacco. All of us at Smith School were farm kids and everyone helped with chores at home and had to help harvest tobacco. There was always lots of tobacco to pile as soon as we got home from school. I think Dad timed the cutting of the tobacco so it would be wilted and ready to pile when we arrived. Suckering and piling were the jobs us kids got to do. I hated both jobs, but we didn’t have a choice. Things got better when we graduated to cutting tobacco down and spearing it onto laths. Those seemed like more grown-up jobs. When we got to help haul and hang tobacco in the shed, we knew we’d been promoted to the major leagues.
Kids raised on a farm didn’t really have a summer vacation, but it was the life we knew. We may have complained about all the work at the time, but we still found some time for fun, and we were never bored. Truth be told, I think it instilled a work ethic in all of us that we still carry with us today.
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