Loren DeLance Squire Family History Chapter 7

In past blogs I have stated that my Grandpa never mentioned his parents' divorce.  I stand corrected.  He briefly mentions it in this chapter.  This was a fun chapter to learn of Grandpa's school days.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I GREW TALLER AND HEAVIER .•.BUT DID I GROW UP?

I was three months short of being seven years old when I started to school in the first grade. A middle aged lady that was short and on the chubby side was my teacher. Her name was Mrs. Bradford. She wore white starched ruffled collars and had a three foot rule as a persuader. For some reason, that I don’t remember that ruler came in contact with my head on one occasion and as I remember it lasted through my years at school. I was not in any way a brilliant student and had to stay after school more than the average.

It was the practice of the teachers in those days that if you missed a word in spelling had assignments wrong or was unprepared you had to stay after school and make up what you were short in. Often having to write the word or words you misspelled fifty or hundred times and go up to the teacher and spell the words before you were excused to go home. There were forty to sixty students in my room or grade all the way through school. I was exceptionally poor in spelling (a problem I still have) and in the study of language. I did like and do good in history arithmetic and geography. It was a very rare occasion that my name was not on the board to stay after school to spell if for no other reason. There were no lights in the schools and we went to stand by the window until the last flicker of light faded before the teachers would give up and go home. I did on a number of occasions have samples of my hand writing and maps drawn placed on the black board as examples of good and neat work. I was specially praised for my making dough maps as the teacher pointed out to the students you could pour water on my maps and it would run off down the rivers. We had to be able from memory to draw any continent and draw on and name the important rivers mountains lakes bays straights peninsulas and etc. We had to know all the countries of the world where they were and what they did there. I am so grateful for that schooling as it has helped so much to know the places where world history is being made in these times. I still use maps very much as I was taught in school to search out on the maps to find out just where things are happening in the world. It makes the meaning so much clearer.

In the spring of 1913 I graduated from the eighth grade. That was a big day for any student in that time. For many it was the end of school. Commencement exercises were held in Mt. Pleasant Utah for all the eighth grade students of Sanpete County. I well remember my dress. I had on oxford gray suit with knickerbocker pants. I must explain these pants, they had a buckle on the end of the pant leg that buckled the pants around the leg above the knee, then the pants folded down over the knee cap like bloomers. I had long black stockings and a new pair of black four button oxfords. We always wore those knickerbocker pants to school and long black itchy stockings. There are still large callus on the cords of my legs back of and above the knee from tying strings around there tight enough to hold the stockings up. It was not until a year later that I got my first pair of long pants. Mothers used to hate the day their little boys got long pants as it marked the difference from a little boy to a big boy, and to letting go of our mothers' apron strings.

The morning of graduation came and I will never forget the thrill of climbing into the first car I was to ride in and of sitting on the lap of a fellow student by the side of the driver. This car had quite high wooden wheels and a back seat, no top and no windshield. The queer feeling I had as it started out without a horse or anything in front. It was eighteen miles to Mt. Pleasant and we made it in a little over an hour. It was breath taking. At one time the driver estimated we were speeding at twenty five miles per hour.

There was an assembly in the morning where we had a program listened to speeches one of which I still remember. The speaker had turned to the girls and was comparing them with peaches and then said "peaches that everybody handles nobody wants to buy." Our class was the largest in the county and I remember marching up onto the stand to receive my diploma.

In the afternoon there were sports in which the different classes competed for honors. They were high­ jump broad jump pole vault, shot put, hurdles foot races and baseball games. Then home in the car . . . a day never to be forgotten.

That summer I worked with father on the farm. During this time the difference in age as well as other differences between my parents resulted in a divorce.

I was two weeks late starting to the first year of high school that fall as I stayed on the farm until the hay was all up and the grain in the stack. I signed up to take shop or carpenter training, agronomy, book keeping, English, algebra, orchestra, and vocal music. I played a cornet in the high school Orchestra and the Manti City band. After hearing my voice my teacher encouraged me to study other courses. However I stayed with the singing and still can see the look of pity and distress upon my teacher’s face when I attempted to sing. I think I nearly drove her to drink.

My tuition was fifteen dollars for the year plus two-fifty extra for shop. I kept record and my total expense for that year’s school was $32.20 which included any shows I saw.

In the spring of 1914 I came out of school never to go back again. I have regretted many times that I was unable to get more of an education. I again helped father with his farm the following summer. That winter I stayed at our home with mother and spent a lot of time reading books from the library.

In the spring of 1915 I rented father’s farm on a share of half of what I could raise. My close friend Rudolph Peterson came in as a partner with me. It turned out to be a very dry year with water almost drying up and that resulted in poor crops. We had lived at the farm all summer and worked hard ...lived mostly on fried potatoes. We had no money so stayed on the farm for the 4th and 24th of July the only holidays of the summer because we had no money to spend. Each of our families had a milk cow so we furnished hay enough to feed them through the winter and sold what grain was ours after taking some to the mill to get flour for the winter. That winter I again spent at home with mother and did spend a lot of time reading library books. We did a little rabbit hunting as twenty-two shells were only fifteen cents a box.

Early in the spring sometime in February I got a job from John R. Braithwaite on his farm for one dollar a day and board with the agreement that I was to stay a year. He had quite a few cattle and a couple herds of sheep. I spent six weeks out on top of the mountains west of Manti during the lambing season with the sheep. Then back to the farm. He hired from two to four other men on the farm that summer. I had to milk five to seven cows each morning drive them to the pasture a half mile away and get back and have breakfast to be ready to go work at eight with the other hired men. Then after five at night I had to go get the cows and milk them and it was usually dark by then. I was glad when the crops were up for the summer. I used a bob sled for three months that winter to haul one load of hay or straw out from the stack each day and spread it around on the snow for the cattle and then a load into the feed racks for the sheep as we fed about three hundred through that winter of pure blood stuff.