MEMORIES OF CEDAR SCHOOL

Barbara (Carlow) McArthur lived with her grandparents across the road from Cedar School. Ida Rosen was boarding at her house and suggested that Barbara could start school at age four. Her grandmother would walk her to school, but the way home was complicated by a flock of domestic geese, they would chase after her and she was afraid of them. She would walk on the long pile of cordwood her grandfather had stacked by the Burnt Barn Hill Road. He cut wood as a cash crop.

Her grandfather was the janitor and each day put a fresh pail of water on a shelf beside the door. There was a dipper there but the kids drank from paper cups made from arithmetic paper. While Barbara was a student here her other teachers were Agnes White of Grand Lake Stream, Evelyn Flood (Pottle), and Edna McArthur (Hood). Mr. Day of Princeton was the superintendent and Barbara was afraid of him. During most of her nine years here, her schoolmates were her brother Albert, Bernard, Russell and Paul Flood, and Genevieve and Sherman Flood. Kathleen Miner and Freda Worrell were at the school during some of that time.

Barbara and Albert went home for lunch. The others brought lunch in a brown bag. Recesses were 15 minutes long and in winter everyone would get on the warm clothes, and have time for one slide down Gooch Hill. Often times the teacher would ring the bell before they got up the hill. When snow conditions were right they would slide down the hill behind the school. A pasture with a barbed wire fence at the bottom. This was called going to China and required a quick maneuver just before the fence.

Larry Keck added onto the schoolhouse when he used it as a home. Originally the building had a door and one window on the roadside. There were five windows along the south side of the room and doors to the toilets in the back. The teacher’s desk was in the southwest corner, on the right when the students came in the front door. The black board was on the south wall behind the teacher’s desk. A big pot bellied stove was in the center of the room and three rows of student desks. This same arrangement existed when Barbara’s daughter Donna attended this school.

Donna (McArthur) Brown grew up in the same house as her mother Barbara did. By this time a sink and hand pump was in the back of the room and Barbara (Carlow) McArthur was school janitor. A stage had been arranged in the back of the room where the students put on a talent show each Friday, reading poems, singing, etc. Also on Friday, the students prepared their lunch on the big stove. This was the only day of the week that Donna stayed for lunch.

Bertha Dwelley was Donna’s only teacher at this school. Donna remembers her as a wonderful teacher; she made learning fun. Bertha often wore a necklace with a dark green stone. Donna admired this and Bertha gave it to Donna the day before she died. Donna still has the necklace, and lives in the Cedar School building. What memories!

Donna’s fellow schoolmates were Freda, John, Charles and Emma Hatfield, Lorna, Mavis, and Lew Dwelley, and her McArthur siblings, Philip, Jackie and Debbie. The Pottle boys (Clifton, Merrill and Basil were sons of Harold and Evelyn (Flood) Pottle) attended school about this time. Donna went on to Calais for high school. There she lived with her Grammie Belle, worked at the Advertiser office and Newberry's and graduated in 1963.

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