My First School - Tim Marsh

"My First School"

Number 7 on the Lincoln County Map (see post from 17 May).

First School I attended in 1927, Miss Ila Simms was my first teacher, finished eighth grade here. Mr. Burt Mansfield was the Principal. The rooms were cold in winter and hot in summer, out-door toilets and drinking fountain. Capital punishment was the order of the day. Ruth Hudson was the worst I ever saw, she surely enjoyed switching the 4th and 5th grade kids. Her favorite trick was a lick for each letter in the word you misspelled. In the thirties, after FDR became president, the children were given free hot soup to all who wanted it. This was part of the New Deal. Several grades to each room, which really worked out quite well, by the time you got to the upper grade you knew spelling, history and geography by simple exposure.

I finished eighth grade here. It was a two year high school. Most of the kids around Lincoln opted to go to Flintville by bus, as it was a four year high school. this I did. It was literally four hard years. As the hard bus seats were unpadded planks, only the bus driver had a padded seat. I can still smell the assortment of smells coming from the lunches, wrapped in newspaper and paper sacks, fried corn on soggy biscuits, sausage and biscuit, or ham, fried pies, baked sweet potatoes or chicken and apples. Each time a different kid got on the bus the smell changed. All the food odors mixed with body odors presented quite a challenge to ones stomach.

This old school doubled as a community center, a meeting house, a movie theater of sorts. I saw my first movie here, "The Girl of The Limberloss." Here pie suppers and cake walks were a favorite event in the community, particularly among the younger crowd. The young eligible ladies would bake their favorite pies and the young men would bid on them, the highest bidder getting the privilege of eating the pie he bid on with the girl who baked it. Often the girls would drop a hint to the boy she was struck on, some times he took the bait, sometimes not. Sometimes two girls would bake the same kind of pie then mass confusion. One old crazy girl once baked a turnip green pie, put it in a box labeled egg custard. There was a new Romeo type who had just moved into the community, making time with some of the girls in the church, that we boys were protective of. One of our group of young blades dropped a hint to Romeo that Crazy Annie's turnip green pie marked egg custard was prepared by one of the young belles in the ARP Church. Romeo bit on it, was highest bidder - so he had to eat that horrible pie with Crazy Annie, while all of us boys hung our heads and snickered to ourselves.

Timothy Richard Marsh at the Lincoln school in 1930.