Dublin Core
Title
Maple Grove Reminiscence and Growing Up in Cherry Country (Fran Carroll McCaw)
Subject
Rural Schools
One-Room Schools
Description
A multi-page document containing Fran Carroll McCaw's memories of attending Maple Grove School, as well as descriptions of farm life during the Great Depression.
Creator
Fran Carroll McCaw
Publisher
Peninsula Community Library
Date
Unknown
Contributor
Mary T Morgan
Rights
This document is protected by copyright law. Contact the Peninsula Community Library for permission to reproduce, display, or transmit this document.
Format
PDF
Language
English
Identifier
LHC 002
Coverage
Traverse City, Peninsula Township, Grand Traverse County, Michigan
Scripto
Transcription
Growing up in Cherry Country
I was 5 years old in 1928 and was planning on starting 1st grade at Maple Grove Elementary School on Old Mission Peninsula. My older siblings – brother Ray was the oldest then Irene, then Elsie than Faye who was 2 years older than me. They had all attended Maple Grove for grades 1 through 8, then Ray went to Mapleton School, Mrs. Hughart was his teacher there for grades 9 & 10. There was no kindergarten – it was called 1st grade then. My first teacher was Betty Janowicz. I remember her as being very pretty and very nice. She only taught there for one year as she became ill and unfortunately passed away. The next year the teacher’s name was Rosabel Robertson, followed by Elnora Pitcher who was my teacher until Grade 8. There must have been an enrollment of 40-plus students. Students came from Gray Road all the way north to Island View Road which was very close to where My family lived. Crossroads inbetween are Bluff Road, Nelson Road, Island View Road (then called Swedish Crossroad, Blue Water Road, and lastly roads leading to Bowers Harbor and Mapleton.
This was a 1-room schoolhouse as were most country schools at that time. There was an entrance which had a room for coats, hats, lunchpails and a place on the floor for galoshes and/or rubbers for our feet. That room led into the main room which contained the teacher’s desk and chair, several students’ desks in neat rows with seats facing the teacher’s desk. There were a couple of long benches up front where students were to sit during their class. There was a pail of drinking water in the back of the room with a dipper. In the other corner of the room was a furnace fueled by wood or coal. The oldest male student usually kept the water pail filled and also brought wood or coal inside to keep the furnace burning. As I recall My uncle who lived near the school made sure the room would be heated when we all arrived.
There were 2 outside toilets, one for the boys and one for the girls, each being “2-holers”. I remember seeing an arc of eater coming from a high round window in the boys’ toilet which I thought to be amazing, “How’d they do that?” I remember we had some playground equipment, swings, a teeter-totter, slide. There was a large beechnut tree in the yard where we spent time looking for beechnuts to eat.
I remember at this time most everyone had cars, only 1 horse and buggy came to school with 1 daughter from Bluff Road around the bend to Center Road then on to school – that was Opel Seaberg who sometimes had to walk from Bluff Road through the woods and hills but always got to school on time.
Most every farm had a cherry orchard and we all looked forward to cherry season when pickers who had worked for us in the past came back to earn extra money, camp near the farm and used the bay to clean up and go swimming. There were always people looking for work. I remember a black man stopping at our house and told my mother he was very hungry and would appreciate getting a job picking cherries. My mother was rather scared of the man only because there were so few black people and she wasn’t sure he could be trusted. She made him an egg sandwich and he said the blessing before he ate. My mother was very impressed.
We played some ball games such as anni-eye over, catch, tag, London Bridge. We had 15 minute recesses in the morning and afternoon. Another game we enjoyed was playing jacks with a ball and “jacks”.
There were blackboards on the walls, a large map of United States, a picture of the first U.S. President, George Washington, white chalk and erasers. Classes seemed to last about 15 minutes. Teacher would call for class to come up front and sit on the bench in front of the teacher and she would ask one student to name the assignmjent for the day and then the subject was discussed and another subject was assigned for the next day. Sometimes there would be 7-8 students in a class, other times only 2 or 3. Students would be told what assignment to study for the next day. The rest of the students in the schoolroom would sit quietly in their seats and study whatever they had been assigned for their class.
During my first few days of school they tell me I cried a lot and clung to my older sister (Elsie), but one day Idiscovered that Reading was quite easy for me so then I began enjoying school – reading was fun. The county school nurse visited about once a month and I never liked to see her as she always told me I needed to get my “big tonsils” taken out. I did have tonsillitis quite often andmissed quite a few school days because of that.
My dad insisted we needed a new house as our current one was pretty old and dad was afraid we might have a fire, so he had my mother’s brother, Uncle Ed Bopry, build it for us. It was summer time and we needed to have another place to live temporarily, so my mother cooked our meals on a kerosene stove in the granary and we had make-shift table and chairs to eat on. Sleeping arrangements were next door at our neighbor, Alfie McManus’s house. He was elderly, lived alone and graciously allowed Mom and we girls to sleep at his house and he and my dad and brother Ray all slept in the barn. Alfie was deaf, talked in a monotone and dragged his words, but my dad used sign language and talked to him on his hands and he seemed to understand and watched and listened intently.
They used some lumber from our old house and proceeded to build a new one for us. (About the only thing I remember about our old bouse was my dad blowing smoke in my ears one time when I had an earache.)
All this took place during the great Depression – everyone was poor but those of us who lived on a farm had more access to food and we only ahad to buy a few staples in groceries like flour, sugar, cottosuet (shortening) coffeeand a few items essential for baking. Every Saturday my parents drove into town and sold cream, eggs, and any fruit that was in season and those items paid enough to buy the groceries we needed. MY MOTHER BAKED BREAD every Monday, several loaves which lasted us for a week. She had done canning of tomatoes, fruits and vegetables, also some meat which we made good useof, We raised pigs and they provided us with “salt pork, some roasts which we stored in a rented freezer in town. Also we always had chickens, usually had chicken on Sundays, and always plenty of eggs to eat.
One of my best friends during grade school lived 2 farms away from ours. Her family had a huge farm where they pastured many cattle and raised fruit, mostly cherries. My friend’s name was Marjee, she was 2 years younger than me but was much more knowledgeable about the birds and bees and told me lots of stuff that I didn’t believe. (Turned out she was telling the Truth!)
Her family had a collie dog by the name of Nester – when I would go to their house and no one was home he would put his mouth around my hand as I tried to knock on the door – he never bit me but make me a little nervous. Sometimes I stayed overnite at their house and always enjoyed their huge breakfast: sausage, pancakes, cereal and fruit. Marjee’s mother was a good cook and would give us the left over pancakes which were like crepes. We’d sprinkle them with sugar and roll them up for a Tea party. She had a play house over the garage.
Sometimes the priest at our parish, St. Joe’s on the Peninsula, would hold a catechism class for we younger kids (ages 7-10). He explained in great detail that God had made the world and everything in it and afterwards when he asked who made the world, Pat K. franticly waved his hand and said “I know, I know, it was Herbert Hoover”. There was considerable laughter in the back of the church by the parents. Herbert Hoover pretty much being blamed for the depression we were in.
I remember when we got inside toilets at our school. When they added a room in the back where we could play games at times.
Anytime we had a rainy day my uncle would take us to school in the car, but when we had blizzards we walked to school and were all bundled up to keep warm. This was before snowsuits were invented. My mother wrapped a huge purple scarf around me – must have been a foot wide and about six feet long – it kept me warm but I could only take small steps.
We wore “galoshes” to keep our feet dry. They were black with several buckles. We wore high top shoes til spring when they were cut them down to oxford height, also our long winter underwear were shortened then also. Of course when summer arrived we went barefoot and had to watch our step because of the chickens!
Almost all farms on the Peninsula had cherry orchards and getting the cherries harvested required help from we farm kids as well as families who came year after year to pick cherries, earn money and camp in tents or use the farms’ out building to live in during the cherry season. They enjoyed that plus got to go swimming, bathe in the bay which was never far from where they were staying. Many of the pickers especially men liked music and would sing, their voices wafting across the cherry orchards. I remember one song “May I sleep in your barn tonight mister, cause its cold sleeping out on the ground” or “99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, if one should happen to fall, 98 bottles of beer on the wall”. Of course everyone chimed in on that part.
I remember one man who could play guitar, mouth organ fastened around his neck & beat time with the music by tapping his foot on a drum on the ground a true genius I thought.
(I always wanted to play the piano. Would pick out tunes by ear on a pump organ which we had. I remember playing “isle of Capri” when it was popular in the 30’s. My brother thought I should take piano lessons so arranged for me to take lessons at the convent in T. C. – For 50¢ per week this aged nun tried to teach me to play by note and would whack me across my fingers as I ignored the notes and played by ear – So that only lasted for 2 or 3 sessions!) Eventually I took more lessons and was taught to play popular music using the chords.
(We dressed to pick cherries in overhalls, tennis shoes or bare feet nothing too good as it was a dirty job: cherry juice running down our [arms] and plenty of dirt off from the tree limbs. We wore a belt with a 5 gal. pail hung on it and could carefully rake the cherries off the limbs into the pail. It took about 5-6 pailsful which were carefully dumped into a wooden lug (about 25 lbs). My sister and I always were happy to have “Alfie” come along and help fill our pails with a couple of his big handful of cherries. (Alfie was a next door neighbor, was completely deaf and had a small farm which he managed by himself. My dad could converse with him using a sign language. I think he made it up but Alfie seemed to understand as he watched my dad’s hands intently. My mother said Alfie became deaf when he was 7 years old, caught a bad cold by going after the cows on a cold fall day, barefooted and not dressed in enough warm clothes). His voice dragged as he spoke but was understandable.
The most cherries I ever picked in one day was 20 lugs. Marjee and I both picked that amount – that was picking “yellow sweets” Napoleon cherries which were bigger than sour cherries and easier to pick. They were used for Maraschino cherries.
We used the money we earned to buy new clothes for school. It was the only way there was to earn money.
After cherries were all harvested we girls, mostly cousins, would go camping for a week, always on Bluff Road, some times we had a tent, another time we stayed in an abandoned house, windows were broken out but it did have a roof over our heads. We all brought food and enjoyed cooking our own meals over a campfire. Margaret brought two home made pies, she had to walk through a pasture of cows to get to our campsight and was afraid a bull would chase her so she managed to get through the fence that surrounded the pasture, left the pies on the ground and ran to our camp sight. We managed to go back and retrieve the pies before they were found by an animal so we had big treat of one apple pie and one cherry pie.
We camped at a good place for swimming – water was quite shallow, beach was sandy and there were fewer stones the water. We found lots of Petoskey stones. This spot is where my family built the house we live in today.
I was 5 years old in 1928 and was planning on starting 1st grade at Maple Grove Elementary School on Old Mission Peninsula. My older siblings – brother Ray was the oldest then Irene, then Elsie than Faye who was 2 years older than me. They had all attended Maple Grove for grades 1 through 8, then Ray went to Mapleton School, Mrs. Hughart was his teacher there for grades 9 & 10. There was no kindergarten – it was called 1st grade then. My first teacher was Betty Janowicz. I remember her as being very pretty and very nice. She only taught there for one year as she became ill and unfortunately passed away. The next year the teacher’s name was Rosabel Robertson, followed by Elnora Pitcher who was my teacher until Grade 8. There must have been an enrollment of 40-plus students. Students came from Gray Road all the way north to Island View Road which was very close to where My family lived. Crossroads inbetween are Bluff Road, Nelson Road, Island View Road (then called Swedish Crossroad, Blue Water Road, and lastly roads leading to Bowers Harbor and Mapleton.
This was a 1-room schoolhouse as were most country schools at that time. There was an entrance which had a room for coats, hats, lunchpails and a place on the floor for galoshes and/or rubbers for our feet. That room led into the main room which contained the teacher’s desk and chair, several students’ desks in neat rows with seats facing the teacher’s desk. There were a couple of long benches up front where students were to sit during their class. There was a pail of drinking water in the back of the room with a dipper. In the other corner of the room was a furnace fueled by wood or coal. The oldest male student usually kept the water pail filled and also brought wood or coal inside to keep the furnace burning. As I recall My uncle who lived near the school made sure the room would be heated when we all arrived.
There were 2 outside toilets, one for the boys and one for the girls, each being “2-holers”. I remember seeing an arc of eater coming from a high round window in the boys’ toilet which I thought to be amazing, “How’d they do that?” I remember we had some playground equipment, swings, a teeter-totter, slide. There was a large beechnut tree in the yard where we spent time looking for beechnuts to eat.
I remember at this time most everyone had cars, only 1 horse and buggy came to school with 1 daughter from Bluff Road around the bend to Center Road then on to school – that was Opel Seaberg who sometimes had to walk from Bluff Road through the woods and hills but always got to school on time.
Most every farm had a cherry orchard and we all looked forward to cherry season when pickers who had worked for us in the past came back to earn extra money, camp near the farm and used the bay to clean up and go swimming. There were always people looking for work. I remember a black man stopping at our house and told my mother he was very hungry and would appreciate getting a job picking cherries. My mother was rather scared of the man only because there were so few black people and she wasn’t sure he could be trusted. She made him an egg sandwich and he said the blessing before he ate. My mother was very impressed.
We played some ball games such as anni-eye over, catch, tag, London Bridge. We had 15 minute recesses in the morning and afternoon. Another game we enjoyed was playing jacks with a ball and “jacks”.
There were blackboards on the walls, a large map of United States, a picture of the first U.S. President, George Washington, white chalk and erasers. Classes seemed to last about 15 minutes. Teacher would call for class to come up front and sit on the bench in front of the teacher and she would ask one student to name the assignmjent for the day and then the subject was discussed and another subject was assigned for the next day. Sometimes there would be 7-8 students in a class, other times only 2 or 3. Students would be told what assignment to study for the next day. The rest of the students in the schoolroom would sit quietly in their seats and study whatever they had been assigned for their class.
During my first few days of school they tell me I cried a lot and clung to my older sister (Elsie), but one day Idiscovered that Reading was quite easy for me so then I began enjoying school – reading was fun. The county school nurse visited about once a month and I never liked to see her as she always told me I needed to get my “big tonsils” taken out. I did have tonsillitis quite often andmissed quite a few school days because of that.
My dad insisted we needed a new house as our current one was pretty old and dad was afraid we might have a fire, so he had my mother’s brother, Uncle Ed Bopry, build it for us. It was summer time and we needed to have another place to live temporarily, so my mother cooked our meals on a kerosene stove in the granary and we had make-shift table and chairs to eat on. Sleeping arrangements were next door at our neighbor, Alfie McManus’s house. He was elderly, lived alone and graciously allowed Mom and we girls to sleep at his house and he and my dad and brother Ray all slept in the barn. Alfie was deaf, talked in a monotone and dragged his words, but my dad used sign language and talked to him on his hands and he seemed to understand and watched and listened intently.
They used some lumber from our old house and proceeded to build a new one for us. (About the only thing I remember about our old bouse was my dad blowing smoke in my ears one time when I had an earache.)
All this took place during the great Depression – everyone was poor but those of us who lived on a farm had more access to food and we only ahad to buy a few staples in groceries like flour, sugar, cottosuet (shortening) coffeeand a few items essential for baking. Every Saturday my parents drove into town and sold cream, eggs, and any fruit that was in season and those items paid enough to buy the groceries we needed. MY MOTHER BAKED BREAD every Monday, several loaves which lasted us for a week. She had done canning of tomatoes, fruits and vegetables, also some meat which we made good useof, We raised pigs and they provided us with “salt pork, some roasts which we stored in a rented freezer in town. Also we always had chickens, usually had chicken on Sundays, and always plenty of eggs to eat.
One of my best friends during grade school lived 2 farms away from ours. Her family had a huge farm where they pastured many cattle and raised fruit, mostly cherries. My friend’s name was Marjee, she was 2 years younger than me but was much more knowledgeable about the birds and bees and told me lots of stuff that I didn’t believe. (Turned out she was telling the Truth!)
Her family had a collie dog by the name of Nester – when I would go to their house and no one was home he would put his mouth around my hand as I tried to knock on the door – he never bit me but make me a little nervous. Sometimes I stayed overnite at their house and always enjoyed their huge breakfast: sausage, pancakes, cereal and fruit. Marjee’s mother was a good cook and would give us the left over pancakes which were like crepes. We’d sprinkle them with sugar and roll them up for a Tea party. She had a play house over the garage.
Sometimes the priest at our parish, St. Joe’s on the Peninsula, would hold a catechism class for we younger kids (ages 7-10). He explained in great detail that God had made the world and everything in it and afterwards when he asked who made the world, Pat K. franticly waved his hand and said “I know, I know, it was Herbert Hoover”. There was considerable laughter in the back of the church by the parents. Herbert Hoover pretty much being blamed for the depression we were in.
I remember when we got inside toilets at our school. When they added a room in the back where we could play games at times.
Anytime we had a rainy day my uncle would take us to school in the car, but when we had blizzards we walked to school and were all bundled up to keep warm. This was before snowsuits were invented. My mother wrapped a huge purple scarf around me – must have been a foot wide and about six feet long – it kept me warm but I could only take small steps.
We wore “galoshes” to keep our feet dry. They were black with several buckles. We wore high top shoes til spring when they were cut them down to oxford height, also our long winter underwear were shortened then also. Of course when summer arrived we went barefoot and had to watch our step because of the chickens!
Almost all farms on the Peninsula had cherry orchards and getting the cherries harvested required help from we farm kids as well as families who came year after year to pick cherries, earn money and camp in tents or use the farms’ out building to live in during the cherry season. They enjoyed that plus got to go swimming, bathe in the bay which was never far from where they were staying. Many of the pickers especially men liked music and would sing, their voices wafting across the cherry orchards. I remember one song “May I sleep in your barn tonight mister, cause its cold sleeping out on the ground” or “99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, if one should happen to fall, 98 bottles of beer on the wall”. Of course everyone chimed in on that part.
I remember one man who could play guitar, mouth organ fastened around his neck & beat time with the music by tapping his foot on a drum on the ground a true genius I thought.
(I always wanted to play the piano. Would pick out tunes by ear on a pump organ which we had. I remember playing “isle of Capri” when it was popular in the 30’s. My brother thought I should take piano lessons so arranged for me to take lessons at the convent in T. C. – For 50¢ per week this aged nun tried to teach me to play by note and would whack me across my fingers as I ignored the notes and played by ear – So that only lasted for 2 or 3 sessions!) Eventually I took more lessons and was taught to play popular music using the chords.
(We dressed to pick cherries in overhalls, tennis shoes or bare feet nothing too good as it was a dirty job: cherry juice running down our [arms] and plenty of dirt off from the tree limbs. We wore a belt with a 5 gal. pail hung on it and could carefully rake the cherries off the limbs into the pail. It took about 5-6 pailsful which were carefully dumped into a wooden lug (about 25 lbs). My sister and I always were happy to have “Alfie” come along and help fill our pails with a couple of his big handful of cherries. (Alfie was a next door neighbor, was completely deaf and had a small farm which he managed by himself. My dad could converse with him using a sign language. I think he made it up but Alfie seemed to understand as he watched my dad’s hands intently. My mother said Alfie became deaf when he was 7 years old, caught a bad cold by going after the cows on a cold fall day, barefooted and not dressed in enough warm clothes). His voice dragged as he spoke but was understandable.
The most cherries I ever picked in one day was 20 lugs. Marjee and I both picked that amount – that was picking “yellow sweets” Napoleon cherries which were bigger than sour cherries and easier to pick. They were used for Maraschino cherries.
We used the money we earned to buy new clothes for school. It was the only way there was to earn money.
After cherries were all harvested we girls, mostly cousins, would go camping for a week, always on Bluff Road, some times we had a tent, another time we stayed in an abandoned house, windows were broken out but it did have a roof over our heads. We all brought food and enjoyed cooking our own meals over a campfire. Margaret brought two home made pies, she had to walk through a pasture of cows to get to our campsight and was afraid a bull would chase her so she managed to get through the fence that surrounded the pasture, left the pies on the ground and ran to our camp sight. We managed to go back and retrieve the pies before they were found by an animal so we had big treat of one apple pie and one cherry pie.
We camped at a good place for swimming – water was quite shallow, beach was sandy and there were fewer stones the water. We found lots of Petoskey stones. This spot is where my family built the house we live in today.