There were fewer than a dozen families who lived on Acord Mountain. Some of the names I remember are Paul Acord, Dewey Acord, Burl Acord, Dorse Cozart, and the Cochrans. Several families who did not live on the mountain sent their children to school there. I can remember Lacy Gray, Fred Acord, Russell Canada and Joy Canada had children that went there. The road up the mountain was so bad that most people walked up. Trying to drive a car up the mountain was unthinkable. The only vehicles I remember seeing on the mountain were 4-wheel drive jeeps. Acord Mountain School was a two-room school on top of the mountain. Maud Daniel taught first through fourth grades and Mr. Wade, the principal, taught fifth through eighth grades.
Daddy played the banjo at a pie supper one Saturday night in November of 1953. I was five years old. Pie suppers were a way for schools to raise money. Women and girls would prepare food and bring it to the school. There was square dancing and people visited with each other. The highlight of the evening was the auction. One at a time, the food prepared by each woman was sold. The man who was the successful bidder was privileged to eat the food he bought with the woman who had prepared it. The prettier single women/girls were usually more expensive to dine with. [It’s still that way!!] Daddy talked to Maud Daniel and told her that I was looking forward to starting in the first grade the next September. Kindergarten hadn’t been invented in this area yet, and the normal age for beginning school was six. Miss Daniel told Daddy that they weren’t very formal there and I could come and sit in if I wanted to. She said I wouldn’t be a proper student until the next year, but I could sit in and observe the classes. Daddy told me about what Miss Daniel said the next day. He asked if I would like to go. I enthusiastically told him yes.
Mommy told me what to expect at school and gave me some instructions about how I should behave. She asked me what I would do if I needed to pee. I said I would go outside and pee. “No, raise your hand and when the teacher asks what you want, say, ‘May I be excused?’” Excused for what? Why couldn’t I say what I meant? That didn’t seem logical to me, but I accepted it.
Mommy got me out of bed Monday morning and fixed breakfast for me. She fixed me a lunch while I ate. I walked alone to the road and turned left to the house where the Gray family lived. Three or four Gray children attended Acord Mountain School. I walked to school with them. I remember wondering if we would ever get there. It seemed like a long way up to the school. When we got to the school, I went in and looked around. There were about twenty desks in the room. Each one had a folding seat with a desk behind it. Students sat on one piece of furniture and used the desk attached to the seat in front of him. Each desk had a hole in it for a bottle of ink. We didn’t use ink. I saw my first cloakroom. One of the Grays told me to take my coat off and hang it up there. There was a coal stove and a contraption I had never seen before. When I asked about it, I was told that it was a water pump. One of the kids showed me how to fold a piece of paper into a drinking cup. When the handle was pumped, water appeared. A blackboard covered the entire width of the wall behind the teacher’s desk. It was really black, not green like most are today. The chalk we used was yellow. Large cursive letters of the alphabet printed on green cardboard hung in a line above the blackboard.
The teacher gave the second, third, and fourth graders some brief instructions to get them started. She then brought the first graders to the blackboard and started teaching them to draw circles and straight lines. They hadn’t started forming letters yet. I thought they must not be very smart. I sat quietly and watched. Halfway through the morning, the teacher announced that it was time for recess. Mommy had not said anything about recess. I didn’t know what to expect. All of the children went outside to play. Miss Daniel got half a sandwich out of her lunch and took it outside to eat. It looked so good. It had been made with meat that was not bologna, mayonnaise, and a big slice of tomato. Miss Daniel saw me eyeballing her sandwich and told me that I could eat part of my lunch during recess if I wanted to.
After I had been going to school for a few days, a few of the older girls took me into the other room after we had eaten lunch. They asked me to read to them out of their schoolbooks. I did. One girl got a dictionary and asked me to pronounce some pretty big words. After pronouncing one long word, I heard one of them say that she didn’t even know how to say that word.
Miss Daniel gave me a report card every six weeks just like she did for the other children. She promoted me to the second grade at the end of the year. Lotus Blankenship was the teacher when school resumed the next fall. Charlie Gray had missed most of the first grade because of sickness, and was a grade behind the other children his age. He was a fellow second grader. We would finish our assignments long before the other second graders. Remember that the teacher had four grades to keep occupied. Charlie and I would talk, laugh, and throw paper while Mrs. Blankenship was teaching to the other three grades. Mrs. Blankenship administered the only corporal punishment I ever received in school. On two occasions, she grabbed the fingers of my right hand, bent them back, and struck the palm of my hand sharply with a ruler. That got my attention. That kind of punishment is not politically correct today. About six weeks into the school year, Mrs. Blankenship asked Charlie and me if we would like to move to the third grade. We both said yes. She gave each of us a note to take home for our parents to sign. Charlie and I were in the third grade the next day. I was asked to take my turn reading aloud a few days later. I came to a word that I hadn’t seen before, but I didn’t even slow down. I pronounced it the way it would be if the English language had consistent rules of pronunciation. I was embarrassed when the teacher corrected me. The word was “island”.
When I started the fourth grade in September 1955, there was yet another teacher. She was Maud Daniel’s sister, Joanne Sweeney. Mr. Wade came into our room after lunch on the first day of the fourth grade. He told all of the boys to follow him. We went to the boys’ toilet. He said he wanted every one of us to go in and take a look. When my turn came, I walked in and saw that somebody had unrolled about ten rolls of toilet paper. Toilet paper was everywhere. After each of us had his turn, Mr. Wade said, “I want to know which one of you did that.”
A first grade boy said, “I did, Mister.”
“Why?”
“What is that stuff, anyway?” was the boy’s reply. He had never seen toilet paper. He didn’t get a whipping, but he didn’t do that again. My education at Acord Mountain School ended when we moved to Glen View in October of that year.
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