Photo taken about 1965
We moved from Johnstown to the Duff Valley, near Rose, Nebraska, in southern Rock County in 1957. I was in first grade. Our new school was Duff Valley District 4. It was the spring of the year when we moved, and I think we had about two weeks of school left. I am quite sure there were hardly ten kids in school, but it seemed like a very large school after what I'd been used to. The teacher at that time was Miss Regina Roggasch. There were two other children in my grade: my third-cousin, Gary Saar, and a little girl named Velda Horner.
I spent the rest of my grade school years at Duff Valley. I believe the most students we ever had was nine. One year, there were only five girls. My grade was always the biggest--we had three. Velda Horner and I went through the grades together, and Gary was with us through fourth grade. His family moved to town before he began fifth grade, and after that, we had Eddie Fowler in our grade.
My teachers were Mrs. Lois Stewart (2nd grade ,1957-58), Mrs. Audrey Caskey (3rd and 4th grades, 1958-89 and 1959-60), Mrs. Mary Schubert (5th, 6th, and 7th grades, 1960-61, 1961-62, and 1962-63), and Miss Sharon Connard (8th grade, 1963-64.) Mr. Glenn C. Estes was the Rock County Superintendent of Schools at that time.
I think I can remember every student who attended during my years in Duff Valley School (spring of 1957-spring of 1965).
ANDERS: Janiele (6? grades below me)
FOWLER: Eddie (in my grade), Theresa (1 grade below me), Gaylon (5? grades below me)
GIBBS: Katie (1 grade below me) She went to Duff Valley School for about a semester when I was in 6th or 7th grade.
HILL: Dwight (5 grades above me), Genevieve ("Gennie"--that's me!), Charlotte (5 grades below me)
HORNER: Velda (in my grade), Carolyn (1 grade below me), Teresa (3 grades below me), Warren (8? grades below me)
SAAR: Mark (4 grades above me), Gwen (2 grades above me), Gary (in my grade), Mike (2 grades below me)
ROGGASCH: Don (5 grades above me)
VARGASON: Gary (4? grades above me) and Barbara (2 grades above me) I don't think we went to school more than a few months, if that, before they moved away.
BROCK: Sharon (6? grades above me) and Jack (3? grades above me) I went to school with them for the two weeks in the spring of 1957 after we first moved to Duff Valley.We flew the flag every day that the weather was reasonable and started each school day by standing and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we had an "Opening Exercise" which was usually singing or playing some singing games like "London Bridges" or "The Farmer In the Dell". We had an old piano; however, none of our teachers were able to play it. The Horner girls were musical, though, and they played for us in our last few years of school there.
Then the teacher called the different grades to the bench beside her desk one at a time for whichever subject she was teaching. After our class met with the teacher, we had seatwork to do, and when our seatwork was finished for a given subject, there were various things we were allowed to do to amuse ourselves. We could always read, and there were usually books from the Bookmobile that we had checked out ourselves or that we were borrowing from another student. We could also play with modeling clay or with the half-dozen easy jigsaw puzzles or the Tinker Toys or Lincoln Logs that belonged to the school. I don't remember being bored much because I was a hungry reader.
In second grade and maybe third, we had a workbook called "Puzzle Pages" in which we were supposed to do a few pages every day and for most of my grade school years, we also had Phonics workbooks. These were some of the things that kept us busy while the teacher was having other classes.
When we were dismissed for recess we had a curious procedure that we followed. First the teacher said, "Position" and we all put our hands on top our desk, palms together, and faced front, sitting up very straight. When everyone in the group had assumed this position to the satisfaction of the teacher, she would say "Turn" and we would all swing our legs around to the side of our desks ready to stand up. Then it was "Stand", and finally when she said, "Pass" we were allowed to file out of the room.
Nearly every year that I was in school, the teacher required us to play an organized game at each recess. We each had our turn to choose the game. Some that I remember were "Ante Over," "Pom Pom Pullaway," "Dare Base" (many variations), "Hide and Seek" and another hiding game called "Beckon, Beckon", "Indian Prison", "Last Couple Out", "23 Skidoo" and "Run Indian Run", and "Johnny, May I Cross Your Bridge". When there was snow on the ground, we played "Fox and Goose" or "Fox and Deer". Sometimes, we had the afternoon recess free and we played on the swing set or just fooled around.
In the fall before school started, Eldon Horner usually baled the school yard, so we stacked up the bales and made "huts" to play in. In the winter, the lower end of our schoolyard usually flooded and we brought our ice skates to school and skated at recess time. When the weather was too extreme for us to go outside, we played "Hide the Thimble," "Button, Button," "Blindman's Bluff", and other inside games. In the spring, we sometimes walked down the road with our teacher and gathered wild asparagus or sailed sticks down the flooded ditches and through the culverts.
Behind the schoolhouse, the old barn was still standing from the days when kids rode horses to school. It was full of junk including boards and some old-time front-to-back desks. We weren't supposed to go in there, but of course we did. The one year that we had only girls in school, Mrs. Schubert allowed us to play in there and we had a lot of fun making up "plays" and performing them for her.
The boys' outhouse was at one end of the barn, and the girls' outhouse was at the other hand. I don't know how many holes were in the bench in the boys' outhouse, but ours had three holes--small, medium, and extra large. In the wintertime, the snow would pile up on the bench a foot deep, and it was very cold to sit on even after the snow was brushed off, best we could. We girls did a lot of socializing in the outhouse when the weather was warm, but when it was cold out, we just tried to hurry!
We got our water from a pitcher pump in the schoolyard. One of the chores that was assigned to the students every day was to fill the water bucket. Another chore was to be the hand-washing assistant at lunchtime. The assistant stood by the washstand and poured water from the dipper over the students' hands as they came one by one to wash before eating. The teacher threw out the water from the washbasin after we had all washed our hands. Each family brought a clean towel each Monday and hung it on their designated hook.
We brought our lunches to school every day in our metal lunchboxes and set them under the bench. In cold weather when we had the stove going, our mothers wrapped our sandwiches in aluminum foil and we set them on the stove to warm. Sometimes we brought soup in a mason jar and set it on the stove to warm a little.
Our stove used fuel oil, and if it had a thermostat, it didn't work. I remember many times that the little schoolhouse was so cold when we got there that we wore our coats for several hours, and even pushed up our desks into a circle around the stove. (It frequently gets very cold in Nebraska winters, and the building was old, poorly insulated, and drafty.) Later, we had a new propane stove, and it worked better.
Our teachers always had us bring a couple of cans of soup in the fall to keep at school. In case we got snowed in at school and had to spend the night, we'd have our soup to eat. This was a prudent precaution, as more than one rural school teacher can tell.
After lunch every day, our teacher read to us for half an hour and that was the best part of the entire day. I remember the books from the "Black Stallion" and "Little House" series as particular favorites of all of us. We also liked the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, even though I know now that they aren't supposed to be very high quality children's literature. On Friday afternoons during last period, we had Art. I always looked forward to it. We did a lot of cutting and pasting and coloring. Once in a while, we got to paint. We had tempera paints and also watercolors.
The Bookmobile came every three weeks. We could each check out three books, and our teacher could check out ten books, as I recall. The Bookmobile ladies that I remember were Mrs. Wilma Bussinger (librarian) and Mrs. Velma Kauffman (driver). It was a wonderful day when the Bookmobile came to school!
Sometimes our teacher would check out film strips from the County Superintendent's office, and on Friday afternoon, we'd pull down the shades and watch them. We didn't have television at that time and I hadn't seen many movies either, so I thought film strips were a real treat!
In the spring each year, we had two county school events that involved a trip to town and a look at all the other students from our county. These events were the county Track Meet and the county Music Festival. The 8th graders had three additional county-wide events: 8th Grade Exams and then a week or two later, Soil Conservation Day (when they also found out how they had placed on their exams,) and lastly, 8th Grade Graduation. For most of the country school kids, these 8th grade events were their first real chance to start getting acquainted with the kids they'd go through high school with.
Every year, our school had a program--usually a Christmas program--that we put on for our parents and everyone in the neighborhood who wanted to come. We practiced for weeks in advance, starting with just a short time each day and finally spending all day at it when it was almost "showtime". We decorated the schoolhouse with twisted red and green crepe paper streamers and special artwork on the bulletin boards, and we made invitations for all the people in our district and delivered them to their mailboxes.
Each of us had a "piece" in the program that we had to memorize and recite as a solo act. We also had several plays that we performed in costume and half a dozen or more songs that we learned. We hung curtains at one end of the schoolhouse to make a "stage" and we pushed the desks to the sides of the room to make room for benches and chairs to be brought in. People enjoyed the rural school programs and some even went to other country schools for their programs. A good Christmas program could help establish the reputation of a teacher, and a poorly managed and performed program could damage her reputation.
Some years, several country schools in the general area of Rose put on a Christmas program together in the Rose Community Hall. Schools that I remember taking part in this were our school (Duff Valley District 4), the Ewing School (District 72), the Meyer School, and the Buell School. This community Christmas program was in addition to the Christmas program that we had already done in our own school.
I estimate that the Duff Valley School had been operating over 40 years and perhaps more than 50 years when I was in school because when we found an old school register in the attic, it had the names of neighborhood people in it who must have been that age.
I am not sure what year Duff Valley School closed, but I think it was about 1970 or shortly thereafter. Several schools consolidated and built a 2-room school at Rose. That school is still in operation. My sister-in-law, Kathy (Charron) Hill taught there two years in the early 1970's.
The Duff Valley property was sold at auction to one of the neighbors after the school closed. The building is still standing, but is in very poor repair and skunk inhabited.
This picture was taken in the summer of 2000, when I went back to visit,
some 35 years after my years of schooling there.
