While we lived at the Exum place, we went to school at Wise Chapel, which was about three miles northeast of our home. In winter we faced cold northers many mornings, and in the afternoons, we often faced strong southwesterly winds on our way home.
As we walked to school, other pupils from other farms joined us, and then still others. By the time we arrived at school, there might be as many as 20 of us in one bunch. One of the families whose kids walked with us was the Bruner family. Papa's younger brother, Ed, married Eva Bruner.
What do you mean, "Did we walk that three miles to school?"
Of course we walked—except maybe two or three times a year when the weather was extremely bad.
I might as well take time right here to mention another little incident which took place along our school trail. It involved one of the Bruner boys. And what happened to that boy should never happen to anyone. But when you get that many school kids in one bunch, most anything is apt to happen, and it did this time.
In the first place, I guess school trails shouldn't cut across pastures, but they did. In the second place, I haven't been able to figure out why God made prickly pears, but He did. In the third place, if school kids are going to use the trails which wind in and out among the thorny bushes and cactus plants, they should never scuffle near prickly pears, but they did. And in the fourth place, if a boy scuffles and falls down, he should never sit right flat down in a prickly pear, but he did.
After he got up, he went straight home. His mother took the tweezers and removed all the large thorns and many of the small ones. Then they took him to Mama because, they said, her eyes were better. She removed all she could see, which left the boy in fairly good shape, I suppose, all things considered.
What we now know as kindergarten was unknown when I started to school. Beginners started in the Primer, and the Primer was not a grade in school—it was a book. As Webster defines it, "an elementary book for teaching children to read."
We went to school to learn to read, write, spell, and work arithmetic problems—and to obey the teacher.
We also learned many other things that were not a part of the regular curriculum and which were not necessarily sanctioned by those in authority. We grouped them all together and called them "recess."