Winter in a Country School

Edrie Swanson, "Winter in a Country School,"​​ In The Midst Of, Cokato Historical Society (Winter, 1984) vol. 2 no. 2.

Myrback School, circa 1940s.

This is the way it was the winter of 1943 in Myrback, a one-room school located nine miles northeast of Cokato, at the
crossroads and on the hill. With the excitement of the Christmas program and its auction of donated articles to raise funds for library books, and the two-week vacation over it was back to school routine. Bundled in mittens, scarves, and four buckle overshoes, the eleven students enrolled in grades one through eight reluctantly trudged through the snow which covered the field (sometimes used as shortcuts) and the seldom traveled roads to the chilly classroom.
The teacher had arrived in her Model A, which was equipped not with snow tires, but with chains.

The highlights in those days, as now, were the free times and holidays. There was no gym or curriculum for physical
education, but there was the whole realm of nature and the imagination and ingenuity of students and teacher.

Fifteen minute recesses arrived, at 10:30 A.M. and 2:30 P.M. Outside we played Follow the Leader, Fox and Geese, built snowmen, and forts, and engaged in the usual illegal snowball fights.

When the temperatures were extreme, we "chickened" in and played Checkers, Touring, Last Man Out, Hide the Thimble,
Ruth and Jacob, Hangman, or used Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys for construction. Sometimes we wound up the Edison and marched to the music. A bookworm who possessed super powers of concentration sometimes crawled into a corner and read.

Teacher and students carried lunch pails. These lunches were sometimes supplemented with potatoes baked on top the big black jacketed stove, or pork and beans or cream style corn reheated there.

Hands must first be washed by the new sanitary pouring method! (Warm water was poured from a teakettle over hands and drained into a washbasin). Each student was required to supply his bar of soap and linen towel. Towels should be taken home and laundered every week!

​Hurrah for the free time after lunch! Since the school stood only a stone's throw from the woods and the banks of Crow River it was off to go skiing and sliding.

​After the first of February the colored paper scrap box was continually raided and homemade valentines were created
in profusion. The large valentine box had to be decorated and the party planned and executed.

This winter we were blessed with a February thaw. On Valentine's Day we made ice cream in the wooden freezer out on the front steps. "But the snow had begun in the gloaming and busily all the night had been heaping fields and highways with a silence deep and white". There was no school the next day.

One Friday afternoon treat was a sleigh ride in Clarence Benson's bobsled.

Myrback School.

Another mild Friday afternoon we enjoyed a "hobo party". We built a campfire on the river and roasted wieners and
heated our good old pork and beans! (One lad said he never cared for pork and beans after that winter). And that's the way it was in Myrback in the winter of 'A3!