Bona School part three: classroom distractions

Bona School 1928

When I get to thinking about Bona School (the old building has long since gone and present-day Bona kids go to the consolidated school in Dadeville) fifty-year-old memories come flooding back.  I will try not to bore you with miscellaneous details but will endeavor to stick to some interesting things.

Bona School had no big school bell on it.  The only bell was a small, hand-held brass bell.  One of the teachers would step out onto the front stoop and ring it five minutes before class time and you had better be in your seat right quick or you would have to stay an extra half hour after school—which meant having to think up an excuse for being late getting home for the evening chores without telling your parents that you had been kept after school.  When that happened to Richard, he would blandly announce at home that he had stayed after school to wash blackboards and dust chalk erasers—which could well be true because something like that was usually what the teachers would make the miscreant do.  (No, we never tattled on each other—that would not have been fair.)

Each room at the school had its own “library” which consisted simply of a bank of shelves along one wall.  There was an American flag in the corner and each morning we would stand and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.  I recall that in the Big Room at the front over Mr. Mitchell’s desk there was a large picture of Sir Launcelot and his horse.  The only other decoration was a portrait of George Washington.

The older boys had a nasty trick they would occasionally play in the wintertime when those old coal stoves were going.  Some of the boys carried their rifles while walking to school in case they saw a rabbit or a squirrel on the way home.  They usually had a few twenty-two shells in a pocket.  Every once in a while when one of them was sent out to fill the coal scuttle, a twenty-two shell would find its way into the coal.  It would sound like a firecracker going off when it got hot in the stove which, of course, was a bit of a distraction from lessons.

The twenty-two shells were not very dangerous because, when they went off, the lead bullet did not go anywhere and the little brass casings would simply ricochet around inside the cast iron stove.  The principal had to try to figure out who was responsible because it was not necessarily the one who went to get the coal—someone could have put them into the coal bin in advance.  Mr. Mitchell was pretty good at spotting the sly look that could give the perpetrator away.

The worst episode of that nature was one time when someone sneaked a four-ten gauge shotgun shell into the coal.  Boy, when that thing went off it was more like a hand grenade than a firecracker!  It did not break the stove itself but it blew the door open and the stove pipe came crashing down.  Of course it scattered black coal soot all over the room and everyone.  School had to be called off for the whole day while the mess was cleaned up.

I did not get very dirty in that one because my desk was right by one of the north windows.  When the stove blew I simply flipped up the window and bailed out closely followed by Rountree Lindley who was my seatmate.  Of course we were closely questioned by Mr. Mitchell because it made it appear that we were ready for it.  I convinced him, however, that the window was the way I always went out when we had a fire drill.  The culprit was not found because no one had carried a four-ten shotgun to school that day so Mitchell sent the girls home and made all the boys stay and help with the cleanup.  That ended the episodes of ammunition in the stove as, from then on, Mr. Mitchell would check all the pockets of all the boys who left guns in the cloakroom an confiscate all the ammunition until school let out in the afternoon. 

Another check the teachers had to make every morning in the wintertime was for skunk odor.  Several of the older boys had steel trap lines and might have skinned a skunk then not cleaned up too well.  Even when it was hard to smell when he came in from the cold, a boy smelling of skunk would really stink in there by that hot coal stove.  The result would be that he got sent home to have a bath and get clean clothes.

I recall one time that Mr. Mitchell tagged a distant cousin, Gene Asbell, for having skunk on him and sent him home.  Henry and Maude Asbell (they were the Asbells involved in the feud with the Tygarts) lived about three-quarters of a mile east of the school.  A few minutes after Gene was sent home, Maude came stalking up the road madder than an old wet hen.  She called Mr. Mitchell out into the cloak room in the hall and really laid into him, insisting that her boy did not smell like skunk.  (We all smelled it and he really did stink.)

Well, Mr. Mitchell patiently heard her out but finally had enough of her tirade.  He calmly said, “Missus Asbell, maybe you don’t smell the skunk on him because I do believe that you smell like skunk yourself!"

Of course that made Maude madder than ever.  She got so mad that she was red in the face and could not even speak.  She finally went off toward home sputtering and fuming to herself.  I do not recall how long it was before she was on speaking terms with Mitchell, but was quite a while.

I met Maud Asbell in 1970.  I do not disbelieve my father.

Bona School part 2: Smoking behind the stable

Bona School, 1927.  The Frieze boys are not in this picture, although many of their cousins are

Bona School had a staff of three teachers—a principal who also taught the Big Room, a Middle Room teacher, and a woman teacher for the little kids in the Little Room.  In 1933 the principal was Mr. Hardesty, the Middle Room was taught by his wife, and a Miss Fern had the Little Room.  In 1934 they were replaced by Mr. J. B. Mitchell as principal, George Richey (one of our distant cousins who had taught us at Shady Grove) in the Middle Room, and George’s wife Evelyn in the Little Room.

The school yard was quite large, probably an acre, so the school building sat well back from the dirt and gravel road.  There was a coal shed behind the schoolhouse and a well with a big cast-iron pump.  On each side of the schoolhouse, and just a bit down the hill, there were four-holer outhouses, one for boys and one for girls.  South of the building there were teeter-totters and swings.  In the far corner of the schoolyear, down beyond where we played our brand of football, shinny, or rounders baseball, there was a small stable for three or four horses or ponies for those who rode to school.  Not many rode in my time.  We all walked anywhere from a mile to two and a half miles.  

Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer

The old stable was used mostly at recess by the older boys who would sneak down there to smoke a Bull Durham roll-your-own cigarette or maybe a tailor-made if anyone had one.

Smoking, of course, was strictly forbidden.  One time during noon hour, I saw Mr. Hardesty slip down there quietly.  Sure enough, three or four boys had a smoke going.  The one who had it in his mouth (I think it was Keith Carnes) tried to flip the butt back into his mouth to put it out right quick but he gagged on it and coughed a gob of smoke right into Mr. Hardesty’s face.  The principal did not say anything at first.  He simply slipped off his belt and proceeded to give Keith a good licking right there, then he gave the others some very choice stern words.

Corporal punishment was common in the schools then and was expected.  Not only did the parents not object, evey kid knew that if he got a whipping at school, he would get another one when he got home.  Some of the fathers did that on general principles and other, I understand, would lay into the errant boy and grow, “There, that is fer gettin’ caught!”

Bona School, part I

Chapter 6

Bona School

 

Con Frieze's drawing of Bona School as it appeared in 1936

By the time we moved to that little farm south of Bona, Richard and I had attended four or five different schools ranging from the large Faxon Elementary in Kansas City to the little grey-weathered one room school, Shady Grove, where we went from Doc Hunt’s place and where Rex started in the first grade.  We attended Bona School from the time we moved to the big yellow house, then the white house and, finally, the little three-room house all just south of Bona.

Bona School (also known as the Lindley School, I guess because the Lindley family had founded it) was one step beyond the common one-room country school room.  Bona School sat on top of a low hill one-mile north of Bona itself.  It was a three-room “Jobe School” (I do not know why), having grades one through ten so it was sort of a combination of elementary and junior high school.  I would reckon that in “olden days” most farm kids did not go to school beyond tenth grade.

Bona School was a white clapboard building built in the shape of a “T.”  Across the ront there were two rooms and added onto the back was a third smaller room.  We referred to the back room as the “Little Room” because that was where they had grades on through four.  The larger room on the north side of the front was the “Middle Room” with grades five through eight.  The other was the “Big Room” where there were the older children in grades nine and ten.

To me there was definite advantage in those country schools with several classes in one room and where each class went in turn to the front row of seats to recite.  Since I usually found the work in my own grade quite easy, I would often listen in on the lectures of the teacher to the more advanced classes and then the following year I was familiar with much of the work.  I would often take home school books to read and study on my own over a weekend just to find out things I wanted to know—science books and geography in particular because I wanted to know about the world and everything in it.  I did not care much for history and both mathematics and grammar seemed to come easy for me.

To get back to Bona School, each of the rooms had its own coal stove for heat in the winter.  All were connected to a central brick chimney.  The rooms had moveable wall dividers between them that could be removed for social events, school plays, and the like. [It seems to me that schools thought moveable walls were an innovation in the 1970s and ‘80s] The desks were mounted on boards instead of the floor so that they could all be rotated to face the little stage that was located at one side of the Middle Room.

The school did not have a carbide lighting system like the Bona Church.  When we first started there, evening events were still lighted by coal oil lamps and lanterns; however, about that time the principal, Mr. Hardesty, raised enough money through pie suppers, etc., that they could buy six Coleman gasoline lanterns which gave considerably better light. 

Wikipedia describes pie suppers as being an Ozark phenomenon to raise money for schools, but I know for sure that they happened in Oklahoma as well.  Young ladies made pies and fixed picnic baskets which were auctioned off to the highest bidder (usually a man) and they ate with them.  The money went to the school.  I remember my grandmother telling about them being common in her day.

A Wondrous Place to Grow UP

On a small farm, the barn is a source of both work and amusement for growing boys—mostly the former.  One of the best things about a barn is the hayloft.  Our cousins and we could while away hours at a time up there.  There was always some baled hay that we could use to build “secret” caves and the main part of the loft usually had lots of loose hay.

Up along the ridgepole of a barn there would be a trolley on a track that was used to bring in the loose hay in piles.  It was equipped with long ropes and made a perfect place to practice gymnastics.  A frequent competition involved climbing up the end wall of the barn then come swinging down on the hay-rope to drop and land in a pile of hay.  The idea was to see who could go the highest and swing the farthest.  I did not much care for the long drop but I was always bound and determined to climb just as high and swing just as far as Richard, James Lowell, and Claude Todd—all of whom were roughly two years older than me.  Somehow, I survived.

Con Frieze's hand drawn directions for making a whistle and a panther call.

While I was on the subject of the things we made for ourselves in lieu of store-bought toys, I should have mentioned the whistles that we used to make to signal each other in the woods.  One was a whistle that we could make from a small maple limb in the spring or early summer when the trees were full of sap and new growth.

A maple whistle is fairly easy—if you know how.  You select a green limb about three quarters of an inch in diameter and cut a straight section about six inches long.  One end was trimmed at a slant for a mouthpiece and a notch cut through the bark an inch from that end.  The bark was then loosened by gently tapping it all along and all around to bruise it but not crack it, then the bark could be slipped right off the wood in one tube.

You then cut away most of the wood from the notch to about half an inch from the other end.  When the damp bark is slipped back on you have a perfectly good one-not “flute,” the pitch being dependent on the length and diameter of the whistle.  I used to try to make a longer one so I could cut some finger holes to have different notes but it was next to impossible to get the bark off a longer one in one piece without cracking it.

Another good noisemaker we sometimes made was a “panther call” made from a short section of green elder.  Elder grows with a thin shell around pith in the middle.  Using a piece about three inches long and three-eighths of an inch in one end.

The last step is to very carefully taper the sidewalls just a little at the end opposite the remaining pith.  The two halves can then be placed together and held between the heels of cupped hands.  You then stick the thing into your mouth and blow.  Opening and closing your cupped fingers can produce an eerie, almost blood-curdling, quavering squall that can be heard for a mile or more.

There were no panthers or cougars in the Ozark hills in the thirties, but there had been in pioneer days.  One time two of the older school boys created quite a commotion in that part of Dade County for a couple of days using those “panther calls.”  They each made one, then in the evening went to an isolated area of thick underbrush down along the Little Sac River northwest of Bona that was called “the cane brakes.”  After dark they separated about half a mile apart and started calling back and forth with their gizmos.

It was a blood-curdling sound, indeed, in the dark of the night.  The story quickloly went around the next day that panthers had come back to the Ozark hills of Dade County.  Those who had heard it swore that it was a cougar and his mate calling back and forth.

Plans were made around Bona to get up an armed posse to hunt the panthers down before they started killing farm animals.  At that point the perpetrators decided to admit that it was all a hoax because one of them might have gotten himself shot if they tried it another night.

(No, neither Richard and I, nor our cousins were involved—although we might well have been had we thought of it first!)

So, you see, Hard Times notwithstanding, there was always plenty of things for us boys to do even though we lacked Little League, the Boy Scouts, soccer, movies, or television.  We never felt that we were underprivileged.  Those Ozark hills were, indeed, a beautiful and wondrous place for growing up.  All that was needed was a fishin’ line, squirrel rifle, a pocket knife honed sharp, and a good imagination.

At least one store-bought toy of my father's childhood survived.  He still had it when he passed away at age 80 in 2002 so it must have been important to him.  Trix, whom I always thought was Pluto from the Disney cartoons, is a WaKourva push button puppet collapsing dog.  I even found an identical one on the Internet which was good since other than the name Trix, there are no markings or manufacturer.  I discovered that WaKourva was a Swiss toy manufacturer which raises more questions than it answers about how Trix ended up in Bona, MO.  Once more I wish I'd asked my father more questions.

The Versitile Corncob

When we did not have our rubber band guns handy and wanted to have a war (Richard and I grew up fighting and often not just pretend) corncobs were a favorite weapon.  They were light enough to just sting and not do any real damage like a rock would.  We often had a two-man corncob fight or we could have a dandy war when some of our cousins came over.

We would choose up sides, gather a supply of corncobs in our pockets, scatter out, then go looking for the “enemy” around the barn.  There was not much in the way of rules.  I do not recall that we had any scoring system.  We usually just fought until we got tired of it and went off looking for something else to do.

Of course, leave it to old Dick to figure out a way to cheat.  He often would have a secret supply of corncobs soaking somewhere in a bucket of water.  A dry corncob is light and inaccurate to throw but a wet cob is heavy and throws more like a rock.  You sure knew it when you got belted with one of those!  Naturally we would yell that he was not playing fair and sometimes when he resorted to his “secret weapon” we would get mad and start throwing rocks or else just walk away.  It was usually the latter because throwing rocks could result in a cross-country chase and it was often too hot for that unless you were headed for the creek and a swim.

Those plentiful corncobs were useful for a lot of things.  They made pretty good handles for either a file or a wood rasp and they could be used for a stopper in a water keg or a coal oil can.  They also could be made into dandy corncob pipes.  Fairly recently shelled corncobs were the best for a pipe and I always preferred the red ones.  It seemed that the outer part of the red ones was a bit harder and more durable than the white one and would not burn through so quick.

To make a pipe, you first cut a section of cob about two inches long.  Then, using the small bald of a pocketknife, it was necessary to hollow out the pith from the inside down to within about a quarter of an inch of the bottom.  Again using the small knife blade, a hole for the pipestem was drilled through the cob just above the bottom.

The pipestem was made from a section of grapevine six or seven inches long.  We used a straight section between leaf joints.  The vine has a small pith right down the middle.  We used a straight piece of bailing wire to drill out the pith to make a hole through the vine/pipestem.  The baling wire was heated ret hot over a candle flame or over a sort of burner that could be made from an old baking powder can with a hole cut in the lid.  We would fill it with coal oil and use a strip of gunny sack for a wick.  It gave a hotter flame than a candle.

General MacArthur with his famous corncob pipe. He was born next door in Arkansas

Our parents knew that we made and carried around corncob pipes for fun, but of course, it was stricktly forbidden to put tobacco into one.  Once in a while we might sneak a pipefull of Dad’s Prince Albert but there were a variety of other things we could smoke in a corncob pipe.  We sometimes used coffee grounds but they were quite acrid and did not taste very good.  There were various coarse weed seeds, some of which was called “Indian tobacco” but they had a pretty sharp taste, too.  The best thing was dried cornsilks.  Those cornsilks made pretty fair cigarettes, too, when we got a hold of a packet of cigarette papers from a sack of Bull Durham.  The dry cornsilks rolled into neat cigarettes.  They burned kind of like a dynamite fuse but we could get three or four good puffs before they burned our fingers.

We had to be very careful about smoking anything.  I do believe that Mother had the most sensitive nose in the county.  If we had been down behind the barn smoking cornsilks or something else even way off in the woods, no matter how carefully we chewed on a sassafras root or a willow twig, it seemed that Mother could smell smoke on your straw hat or your clothes almost as far as she could see you.  Sometimes we could make the excuse that we had built a campfire out in the woods, but she could often identify the kind of smoke.

Getting caught smoking was one of the offenses that could result in a good licking.  Mother, however, never administered corporal punishment.  That was reserved for Dad when he came in from the fields.  Most offenses such as smoking cornsilks were good for three or four swings of Dad’s razor strop or his belt.  That was not too bad as the strop or belt were wide enough to just sting a little without making welts.  Our backsides were pretty tough anyway.

In the little I inherited (other than stories) from my father there were two pipes, one of them corncob.  When I went to take a picture of it I could not find it, but I will keep searching because I know I laid hands on it six months ago.

Playing during the Great Depression

In spite of the lack of money for store-bought toys, we boys always had plenty of things to do besides hunting, fishing, and rambling.  If we found some time on our hands, or just wanted something different, we invented something to do.  We made our own slingshots that we carried in a hip pocket from a small fork of a hickory tree, two rubber bands cut from an old automobile inner tube, and a piece of leather from the tongue of a cast-off shoe.  We also sometimes carried some small pebbles in a pocket to shoot at birds, fence posts, tree trunks, and sometimes at each other when we got mad.

You may recall that in an earlier chapter I mentioned the usefulness of that white pine Grandpa used for making egg cases.  The thick end pieces were ideal for whittling out things like boats, airplanes, and rubber band guns.  We could always find some pieces in Grandpa’s kindling box.

Perhaps I should explain about those rubber band guns.  We made them to shoot at each other when he had mock wars.  A piece of that thick white pine was whittled to the shape of a handgun with a barrel long enough to get a good stretch to a loop of rubber cut from one of those old automobile inner tubes.  The rubber band was stretched from the muzzle to a notch at the rear and you fired by flicking the rubber loose with a thumb.  Those heavy rubber bands were not dangerous but they sure did sting, especially if someone got you on the rump while you were bent over with your overalls stretched tight.

One things that was fairly easy to make and afforded many hours of recreation involving muscle power, balance, and coordination was homemade stilts.  We made them from sapling poles about seven feet long by simply hailing on blocks of two by fours to put our feet on.  Beginners and little kids would have the blocks on a few inches off the ground, but, evidently, we vied to see who could walk on them with the blocks the heist.  I once made a pair with the blocks nearly two feet off the ground that gave me a good long giant stride.  Of course it also gave me farther to fall if I got off balance or tripped on a rock.  The latter happened every once in a while as there were plenty of sandrocks and rounded glacial flintrocks in that red Ozark hill soil.

Cedar shingles were handy to have around, too.  We used them to make wood arrows.  Those shingle arrows could not be shot with a bow because they had wood vanes at the tail instead of feathers that would go through your fingers.  Instead, we made a launcher that was sort of a mono-bow.  It was a length of lithe green hickory limb having a lot of spring in it.  A string or piece of fishing line about two feet long was tied to the small end of the throwing stick and a knot was put in the other end of the string to fit into a notch on the arrow.  The trick was to get the arrow balanced and the notch in the right place.

We never shot those shingle arrows at each other as the sharpened point would be dangerous.  Instead, we had contests to see who could shoot the arrow the farthest and the most accurately.  Again without realizing it, we were building coordination, agility, and muscle power.

Exploring the Ozark hills

When it was the wrong season for squirrels and rabbits and the fish were not biting (the “dog days of August”), one of our favorite activities was sampling roaming the countryside “exploring.” Without hardly realizing it, we picked up a lot of woods lore that way.  There was no tree, bird, insect, or varmint that we could not identify.

We learned self-sufficiency, too.  We could leave home right after breakfast on a free day carrying nothing but our fishing lines, a few kitchen matches, and a small packet of salt in the watch pocket of our bib overalls.  Sometimes we would take the twenty-two also.  After a long day in the woods we would come home well fed in time for the evening chores.

It was easy.  We knew everything in the woods that was edible.   We could always swipe a couple of potatoes out of someone’s truck patch along the way and stick one in a back pocket.  Then we might kill a squirrel if we had the rifle or else catch a couple of perch in the creek.  Then all we had to do was build a fire.

high, I would hunker down, rifle cocked and ready, and stay motionless for a few minutes to see if one came out.

If we had a aquirrel, we would gut and skin it then roast it on a spit over the coals.  If we had a fish, we would find a bed of good grey clay, gut the fish, wrap them in clay, and put those also in the coals.  When the clay dried and cracked open we raked them out of the ashes.  The scales and skin came off when we peeled away the clay and presto, a little salt and we had lunch.

One skill that roaming the countryside and, in particular, hunting squirrels taught us was the ability to move silently through the woods and brush.  Squirrels are nervous, flighty little creatures and any strange sound will send them scurrying to cover in a next or a den tree.

There are two ways to hunt squirrels.  One was to find an area of the woods where you had seen squirrels, pick out a comfortable spot on a log or against a tree, then simply sit and be quiet and motionless until the squirrels started moving about.  The other way was to drift silently along through the tick woods keeping a sharp eye out for squirrels darting up a tree or along a branch.  If you stand still, a squirrel will stop and peer at you.  When you see his eye, let him have it. 

I personally preferred the latter method although if I spotted a promising den tree (a hollow tree with a hole up high that was worn smooth around the edges) or a tree with a squirrel’s nest up

We practiced that skill both while hunting and while sneaking up on each other until, our bare feet noiseless on the woodland floor, we could move as silently as an Indian is reputed to be able to do without disturbing the branches and sparse undergrowth through which we moved.  It became second nature to pick the best route and avoid setting a foot down on a dry twig that might snap.

The ability came in handy at other times, too.  I recall one time that I had taken little brother Rex with me to the “Big Rock Hole” on Maze Creek to fish and to practice in the woods.  I got lucky and caught the largest fish I had ever seen come out of Maze Creek.  It looked like a chub, but must have been ten or more inches long.

After catching the fish, I decided to go home by way of Grandpa’s store figuring to show off my fish and that maybe he would give us each a bottle of strawberry or grape NeHi pop since it was a very hot afternoon.

About halfway to the road we (Rex trailing along behind) came around a bend and were suddenly face to face with two strange men coming along the path.  I knew they were not locals.  They were wearing pants with belts instead of overalls and they carried fancy rods and reels.  We in North Morgan Township were more than a bit reserved with, and maybe a bit distrustful of, “strangers.”  That meant anyone who came from more than four or five miles away.

The men halted and admired my “big” fish.  One of them said to the other, “See, I told you there were some nice fish in Maze Creek, Jake.”  Turning to me he said, “Where did you catch him, boy?”

I jerked the thumb of my free hand over my shoulder, “Back there a ways.”  Rex in the meantime was peering at the strangers from behind me.

“What did you use for bait?”

“Worm.”

“Ain’t much of a talker, are you?” he said.  “Tell you what—we haven’t caught much of anything.  I will give you a dime for that there fish.”

I was still thinking of showing off that fish to Grandpa and taking it home for Mother to cook.  I simply shook my head.

“Oh hell,” he said, “I might even give you a whole quarter.”  He turned to his partner, “Jake, you got a quarter on you?”

There was a small break in the underbrush to my right.  While Jake was feeling in his pockets for a quarter and the other man was watching him, I nudged Rex and faded quietly into the underbrush with my little brother at my heels.  We moved a few yards then knelt down well concealed.  I put a finger to my lips for Rex to be quiet.

We could hear the mean clearly in the still, warm air.  One of them exclaimed, “What the hell!  Where did they go?!”

“Aw,” the other answered, “these hill kids are shy as barn cats—one minute you see them, the next you don’t.  Guess he didn’t want to sell that there fish.”

We sat silently as we listened to them move on up the path, their voices fading as one of them said, “Downright spooky, that’s what.  I never heard a sound but when I looked around, they just weren’t there!”

That made me feel proud and not mind being called a hill kid because that was the whole idea—to simply vanish into the woods without a sound.

“Whyn’t you sell him that old fish,” Rex asked.  “You could have had a whole quarter and we could have bought a bottle of pop for just a nickel of it!”

“Didn’t want to.  Come on, let’s cut up over the bluff and go home.