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Show "I REMEMBER"! BY 1V1 OLD TIMERS From Mary Overstrect, Leigh, Nebraska: I remember in the spring of 1876 when a half dozen farmers built the first schoolhouse in our district (the north end of Colfax, County, Nebr.) It was new prairie country coun-try and we had lived there for three years. I was seven years old at the time. There had been school in a private home, but it was too far for a small girl to walk alone. There were 12 scholars the first term, my little brother, not quite four, being one of them. The teacher wanted as many scholars as she could get as there were not enough to keep her busy ... although al-though each one had a different textbook. I remember the second morning morn-ing I started out alone (it was of a mile). I was told that when I got out of site of home, I could see the schoolhouse. They forgot that grownups could see a bit farther over the hill than little lit-tle me. As there were no other landmarks in that new country, I returned home, got some little sticks for flag staffs, tacked white flags on the ends and set them up in the ground at short distances, the last of them, of course, in plain .sight of the schoolhouse. So, I made it to school, a tin dinner pail with my noon lunch and spring water to drink, as there were no hot lunches in those days. |