On Saturday, Sept. 15, Oysterville School will celebrate its 100 year anniversary. Sponsored by the Oysterville Community Club, the celebration runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will feature historical displays, a short program with sing-a-long, games and a chance to visit.

About 20 Oysterville School “alums” are planning to come. Bring your own sack lunch. The Club will provide cake and coffee. Come for the fun of it.

Classmates who come back to the Peninsula say, “I was lucky to grow up here.” We look back on our childhood and remember the good. And I was fortunate to attend this one room school; they were becoming rare even then. Along with Kay Wright and Richard Miklos, I was in the last class to graduate from Oysterville School in 1957 (6th grade). In the lower grades were Chuck Biggs and Daryl Scheckla (5th grade) and my sister Katherine Holway Smith (2nd grade). The next fall we would all bus off five miles south, as the Oysterville School closed and consolidated with Ocean Park Grade School.

Memories of those early years crowd in accompanied by the sweet resin smell of the floor sprinkles the teachers used to keep the wood waxed and cleaned. We played games like hide and go seek, Annie-I-Over, and rougher games pom pom pullaway, red rover, war games (digging tunnels in the sand, sword fern fighting), snow games (snowmen, snow angels, snow ball forts and throwing snowballs, some with pinecones in the middle) and “skating” on the crackling frozen ditches behind the school (running and sliding on the ice). We competed at all kinds of things: hanging from the monkey bars; pumping our legs to swing the highest, walking across the bars with our hands, hanging from the monkey bars by our knees, throwing batons up and catching them, spelling the best, reading the fastest, adding numbers quickest, dancing the Irish washerwoman the fastest, doing perfect somersaults, cartwheels, and back flips, too, thanks to Darlene Biggs’ instructions. We balanced and walked the 2-by-4’s of the fence line, raced in rowboats and dared each other to be the first to go swimming in the cool April water of Willapa Bay.

In the spring time, at recess and after school we trolled the rusty ditches along the “new road” (Sandridge) kidnapping pollywogs in jars; we picked, peeled and ate “bear candy” (Salmonberry shoots) picked daffodils from the edges of the road, and found baby snakes that we learned to hold to prove we weren’t afraid of snakes.

Fast friendsWe made fast friends; we welcomed the variety of new students whether they were there for a few weeks (Edianne Olsen), a few months (Mona and Freddy Espy) or a big family like the Rices who had a child for almost every grade and moved here to stay.

My folks, Ted and Virginia Holway, moved to the Peninsula in the 1930s when Dad took up oyster farming. I was the fourth of five children including John, Ruth, Ann, and Katherine. They sent us off to school just 1 1/2 blocks from home. I used to long to go to school, and with our dog, Tippy, waited for the “big kids” to come home on the bus from Ilwaco. In the evening everyone in the family was reading a magazine, book, or the newspaper. I used to sit looking at the comic strips, pretending I could read. Mom would read to us kids before we went to bed, maybe “Mrs. Piggle Wiggle” or “Mother West Wind.” Although a teacher, she left teaching reading to our teacher.

Our parents brought us to school to start the first grade. We clustered like bees near the corner blackboard, “Can you write your name?” Butch Wolfe asked. Sure enough, many could. I didn’t know how and was mortified. It made me even more eager to learn.

Mrs. Herman (Tillie) Bronsch from Monroe was our first teacher. She was an experienced primary teacher, used to one room schools, familiar with establishing structure and order, getting us started off on the right foot with learning. We looked up at the alphabet, simple straight-lined letters beside the rounded (cursive) letters posted above the chalk board. We practiced our penmanship, too.

It was a thrill to learn to read. And the Bookmobile would stop so we could go pick out new books. The librarian always had something chosen just for us. I read so many books so fast that the other kids timed me to see how many I could read in 10 minutes.

Mrs. Bronsch came with a family, too – her husband, Herman and three children – Erwin, Marilyn and Marcia who was my age. They lived in the Wachsmuth cottages just across from the school and here was another friend to play with! We climbed on top of the oyster boxes, creating a covered wagon, eating our dinner outside like pioneers. We also went exploring in the woods by the school, imagining we found a cross (doubtless part of an old fence) and a pioneer trail. The high alder trees shaded out underbrush; we marched through thick cut grass (sedges) like we were on an African safari. The skunk cabbage glowed green and yellow, an early harbinger of spring.

After teaching to the end of our fourth grade year, Marcia and the Bronsches moved away. We missed them. Before long, we heard of a new family moving into the Newton Place [Andrews Garage]. Mrs. Frances Reynolds, her husband Sherm, her daughters Doris and Joan moved in along with a beautiful red Arabian horse, Nora. This was thrilling news to horse enthusiasts like Kay and me. Joan, like a kind older sister, taught us the fine points of horsemanship and Arab showmanship and shared Nora with us. We even got to see a fresh born foal.

A ball of energyMrs. Reynolds was a ball of energy, full of ideas. As with Mrs. Bronsch, we started the day by lining up outside and marching to our desks. We would say the Pledge of Allegiance. Mrs. Reynolds then gathered us around the piano while she played and we sang ” America,” “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,” “Moonlight Bay,” and our favorite, “The Sidewalks of New York.” That’s pretty funny considering how far away we were from sidewalks and especially from New York!

Then we were off to our classes, each one having her attention in turn. She taught us the regular school work but also worked on what we needed most, enrichment. We were the only family with TV just then, so it was still a big deal when we got a film projector (with Dad’s help). We watched educational films including one called “Screw Drivers and Screw Jays.” It was all about how to be a good driver, told in a comical manner with many examples of bad driving. It was humorous but when Mrs. Reynolds rewound it and we watched cars backing up hill and people walking backwards and jumping backwards into cars, we went into hysterics. At our request she played it over and over again and we convulsed with laughter. It’s hard to imagine any children in our video-savvy age reacting like the innocents we were.

She fashioned projects that would appeal to our interests and intellect. She made sure I got a “How to Draw Horses” book and framed a picture I’d drawn of my horse Molly. She taught us how to make copper pictures, drawing on thin sheets of copper, pushing out the design and staining it black and rubbing off the black so we were left with a lovely copper picture etched in black. For Kay and I who loved performing, Mrs. Reynolds encouraged baton twirling. Our mothers, both capable seamstresses, made us outfits and we choreographed our routine to “Stars and Stripes Forever”, twirling our batons in figure eights and circles and throwing them in the air and often catching them, too. We invited the public to a show. Our schoolmates and our dutiful and devoted mothers came.

The boys (with the help of our fathers) gathered oyster (seed) boxes down near the dump by my father’s cannery. The boys took them apart carefully enough so they had wood (1x4s) to work with. They built a small house so the first graders, my sister Katherine and Majel Robertson, could “play house.”

Mrs. Reynolds also got us a jigsaw so we could all learn to cut things out of wood. The boys cut out the ends and bottom of a clam “bucket,” shaped more or less like a lunch pail, using the wood from the seed boxes, wire mesh, and a mop handle for holding. It sold well. We earned money to pay for our projects and save up for a field trip.

We also made corner shelves out of thin walnut veneer; we made silver holder shelves; we made cutting boards in the shape of pigs; we made upholstered footstools. We gave them as presents to our families and also sold them in the community.

And we published our own newspaper, The Oysterville Gazette! We sold subscriptions and ads, too. We older kids were editors and managers, and the younger ones were reporters; we all wrote about the comings and goings of our families and neighbors.

We took a great field trip to Tacoma. Our mothers drove us to Kelso where we caught the train to Tacoma to see the Washington State Historical Museum. Somehow the local TV station heard about it and filmed us there. We got back home in time for the 11 o’clock news. Everyone stayed up to watch TV and there we were in black and white, live!

Mrs. Reynolds stayed one year and then moved Long Beach to teach at the elementary there.

Next came Miss Daniels. She was older than our mothers and in rather poor health from arthritis and a near death experience with frostbite. But she adapted to her handicap. Since it was difficult for her to walk, she had us come up to her desk. At recess, she often told us to race and then walk around the school 10 or 20 times. She could keep track of us as we raced by. She sent us on errands she could not do herself, such as bringing the snacks from her house that she made for us for recess.

Miss Daniels was a terrific cook. She knew the surest way to my father’s heart. He loved her fudge – the very richest and best ever of marshmallow cream, walnuts, sugar and more sugar, and chunks of big Hershey Bars – a heart attack waiting to happen! And when she occasionally came to fry clams, my mother just stepped aside, keeping her nutritional sense to herself, and let Miss Daniels deep fry clams and oysters to a golden crusted finish. Whatever she made was fattening – and delicious!

Much of her discipline and “tightening the reins” prepared us for going on to Ocean Park Grade School, a bigger more structured school. But it was hard to lose our freedom and we didn’t always appreciate her new rules. She “improved” our Oysterville Gazette by making us do “reports” for it and making the printing darker and easier to read. It was more organized but not as personal, gossipy and fun. She edited us carefully about what went in the paper.

In response to our grumbling, no doubt, some older brothers and sisters led us kids to throw rocks at her trailer one night. Of course, it didn’t scare her away and we got caught. Then for Halloween, she talked the parents out of trick or treating and instead held an old-fashioned Halloween party at the school. We bobbed for apples, tried to bite into apples suspended on strings, had costume contests and “go fish,” and ate treats of caramel apples, popcorn balls, fudge, divinity and cookies.

A last caperAs one of our last capers, Kay and I, in friendly competition with Richard, Daryl and Chuck, trying to out-dare each other, claimed we could eat skunk cabbage. How we ever came up with such an idea, I have no memory. Whatever the reason, we took the biggest baddest dare of all: to eat skunk cabbage.

We thought maybe they’d forget but they nagged us, so one noon hour when the teacher wasn’t looking the boys brought us skunk cabbage, green leaves and the bright yellow calyx. They handed it to us, jeering, “You aren’t going to eat it, are you?”

So of course, we bit into the green leaves, chewing. It wasn’t too bad. Then Richard said, “You gotta eat it all!”

Nothing would do but we bit into the yellow spiky center. The skunk taste burned and seared our mouths. We wanted to spit it out, but the boys said, “You have to swallow it!” So swallow it we did. It burned all the way down.

After we swallowed it, we kept straight faces and the crowd of children fell away as lunch hour was over. We ran into the back of the school to the sink, pouring cold water into our mouths and down our throats. It didn’t help and may have made it worse.

Although we won the dare, I bet the boys knew we’d ended up with our mouths burning something awful. Even though I’ve learned to eat chili hot enough to make me sweat, nothing I’ve ever tasted has ever been as hot and burning as that skunk cabbage, eaten on a dare.

I’m proud of the successes of my schoolmates. All completed high school; most completed advanced training. Many own their own businesses. They have succeeded far beyond statistical predictions, perhaps from all the individual attention from the teacher and community support.

It was a different time, sometimes isolated, sometimes like a Montessori School. The houses were full of families and being part of the community meant not only telling of the goings on of our friends but also inviting others in need to dinner and always taking a full car of kids and adult down to the show (movies) or the football game on Saturday afternoons in Ilwaco. Let’s talk about that on Saturday. Y’all come!