Random Recollections III

"I remember one year in December when our Christmas tree was up and decorated in the living room of the big house where Grandpa Thompson and Aunty Mabel lived. (If we ever had a Christmas tree in the little house where my family lived until I was about 12, I have no memory of it.) We always spent Christmas Eve at the big house. We would start with oyster stew and then probably have potato salad and cold cuts with pie for dessert. After the table was cleared and the dishes washed and put away, we could gather in the living room to exchange presents. I would usually get to be Santa’s helper in passing out the gifts from under the tree. Aunty Vivian would be the one to read the tag and have me deliver the package.
One year I had really hoped for a pair of skis but there were no packages under the tree that could possibly hold them. After all the presents had been distributed and I didn’t get the skis, I tried to be happy with the gifts I had received. I was then asked if I would go to the kitchen and get something (I don’t remember what) next to the telephone behind the door. Of course, when I got there…there were my skis!
I can remember some of the Flugum (floo-gum) children being at our place shortly before Christmas one year and being invited in to see the tree in the big house. We had electricity as early as 1910 but most of the neighborhood didn’t get it until the REA came through in the 1930’s, so our tree had lights and ornaments all over it and I could tell they were so impressed by the beauty of it all.
When I was growing up our country elementary school was situated on a corner of our farm about ½ mile from our house. During the week the teacher was housed and fed in the big house across the garden from our little house. She taught all eight grades every day besides presiding over both morning and afternoon recess and monitoring the pupils during lunch. In the back part of the room there was a large heating stove which she had to start up in the morning and keep going all day and “bank” for the night.
This was basically a one-room school although there was a small coat room on the front and that was where we would take off our coats (or snowsuits), boots, mittens and scarves and hang them on hooks on the wall.
It was fairly easy to listen in on the lessons going on in the front of the room, so by the time we reached that grade we would have heard the lesson several times and would know the answers. The whole school had anywhere from a dozen to 18 students, some grades were not needed at all and others only had one or two members.
I remember a time when my dad came to pick me up with a team of horses on a big farm sled. A blizzard had been going on all day and he came to get me home safely. He also took Harriett Peterson to her home up the hill from our house. When we were out in cold winter weather in a wagon or sled we would use a cover made out of a horse hide."

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My family also had oyster stew on Christmas Eve (because of my mother) and I miss it. Oh,well, I can't really expect you children to like it just because it means something to me.

Apparently the Thompson family farm was doing very well in the first years of the twentieth century. Not only were they able to afford to run electrical wire out from town, but they also redecorated the whole house around 1914.

At some point there must have been a need for cash, though, because half of the original square mile that was homesteaded was sold to the Petersons. The drive forked just before the spot where the house stood that my mother lived in when she was little and then their drive went down over one of the streams and up the little hill to their house. I would like to include a map of the farm so you could visualize things better, but I don't know how to do that.

I remember seeing the old schoolhouse on the corner where the drive met the road. It had sat empty for years and one time when we arrived, it was gone. It had been moved to form part of a pioneer village somewhere in the area.