This is a photograph of all the students present on picture taking day at the old two-story Maple Hill Grade School in 1931. You will see several adult teachers in the middle of the group. The lady with the fur collar on her coat and wearing a hat, is Miss Helen Lauck, daughter of Dr. J. Wilson Lauck. The lady immediately to her right is Miss Mary Oliver. She would later marry Lester “Shorty” Raine. Miss Oliver taught in the Maple Hill Grade School for many years. Standing behind Miss Lauck, with a smirk on his face, if my father, John Leander “Tim” Clark. Sadly, I’m not sure who the rest of the people are in the photograph and there probably are many who would recognize those young faces from almost 80 years ago. My mother, Lucille (Corbin) Clark and her brothers and sisters are not in the photo because they were living and attending school in Eskridge, Kansas at that time where Robert Corbin worked for Frank and Amy Penrice on their farm.

Do any of you recognize others in the photo??? Please leave comments if you do.

I attended the first three years of grade school in this building. There was no Kindergarten, so I began first grade in 1950. I have a few memories of the building. First and second grades were together in a large room on the southwest corner of the building. The large windows flooded the room with light. There were black boards on three sides of the room and windows on the south side. Miss Brakey was our teacher. There were actually three floors in the building. The basement was only partially underground and there were windows around the tops of the rooms in the basement. There was a large room in the basement where we went to eat our lunches. The younger children ate first and then the older children. After we were in fifth grade, we could eat outside if the weather permitted. We played outside at recess and after lunch unless it was pouring rain or snowing squalls! Cold air was good for children and we got plenty of it. Also in the basement was a large furnace room where the janitor stoked the coal furnace early in the morning which kept us warm during the cold winters.

I don’t know why but I remember there was a small room on the first floor where all of the teachers went to duplicate materials. That duplication was done on a gelatin-like substance. The machine was called a Hectograph. You had to transfer the original to the gelatin surface, and then you could make copies, one at a time by putting paper onto the gelatin surface and then lifting it off. It was great fun!

Charles Mitchell was the school janitor for several years at that time and lived in the old Taylor Hotel, which was the first house east of the school. He was usually in the school building all day and his wife, Bonnie (Thomas) Mitchell would come over after school and help clean the rooms and empty trash.

We would have fire drills. Although I never remember a fire at school, the floors were swept with oil-based sweeping compound and were actually oiled as a dust preventative. Fire would have spread very quickly through the wooden building. I remember Charlie Mitchell standing at the bottom of the big stairway, with a small hammer and what I remember as a disk blade off a field disk. The disk blade was on a long piece of wire and he would strike the blade with the hammer making a bell-like sound. We children would all form a double file and process with the teacher out of the building. Fire drills were great fun and got us out of class for a while.

There was no school lunch at that time. Everyone brought their own lunch from home and we either ate it in the basement or outside. The new/present Maple Hill Grade School, was built with a large kitchen and we ate at tables in the adjoining gymnasium. What a luxury!

Those are some of my memories. What are some of yours???