Jefferson Grade School

We attended Jefferson Grade School. The two-room school was located one mile south of the brick house at the southwest corner of Jefferson and Buckhorn Roads. We called the rooms “Little Room” (1^st through 4^th grades) and “Big Room” (5^th through 8^th grades). Each grade usually had 3 to 6 students. There was one teacher in each room so we learned early on how to concentrate on our own assignments while another class recited.

Most of us girls wore jeans rather than dresses. This was so we could play on all the playground equipment and hang upside down on the monkey bars and not show our panties. Girls were also needed on the softball diamond to have enough kids for two teams. Lunchtime in the good weather was extended to an hour and featured lively ballgames. Jump rope was also popular among girls of all ages. We also played Dare Base (touch tag) and “Blackman” (little political correctness in those days). In the wintertime we played jacks, pick-up-sticks and card games in the classrooms.

Although we played “Blackman,” we were a racially diverse group of kids. The student body was made up of Japanese, Mexican and Caucasian students, and we all got along. I can’t remember a racial slur being said. My best friend was Betty Fujii. I spent a lot of time with the Fujii’s. My mother told me later, though, that there were families at the school who wouldn’t allow their child to stay overnight with a Japanese family. So I know there were post war prejudices although I didn’t experience them in my household.

The things I probably remember best from those schooldays are the trips to and from school. There were no buses, so families who lived near one another carpooled in the winter. In the spring and fall, kids walked or rode bicycles or horses to school. There was a horse barn on the school property (that’s where we played Auntie Over). I’ll digress a bit and also mention that it wasn’t until my second grade year that the schoolhouse had indoor lavatories, a kitchen (no hot lunches, though) and a gym. So, when I was a first grader, we used outhouses. I remember that in the wintertime, some younger kids resisted going to the outhouse and would leave a puddle on the floor. (I never did, thankfully.)

I rode my bicycle to school, a distance of one mile each way. The first half mile was on Highway 30 (now Highway 201), the federal west to east highway. It was very busy with cars and large trucks, so we learned early on how to ride close to the shoulder and to watch behind us for approaching vehicles. We dutifully rode on the right-hand-side of the road and observed all rules of the road, even signaling to turn. One day on my way home from school, an Oregon State patrolman stopped me and told me I was riding on the wrong side of the road. I was flabbergasted and told him that we had learned in 4-H that bicycles were to travel on the right, but if one was walking, they were supposed to be on the left. He disagreed, so I dutifully changed to the left hand side of the road, even as awkward as it seemed.

The next day, I told my teacher about the incident with the patrolman. She immediately called the County Extension Agent, our 4-H leader. No more was said until the following Saturday. A knock came on the door of the brick house. My mother answered, he asked if a “little redheaded girl lived there.” and my mother called me to the door. There was the tallest policeman I had ever seen (remember I was only a 5^th or 6^th grader).  He stood there in all his glorious height and in his beautifully pressed uniform and apologized to a little redheaded girl (me) that he had been wrong in what he had told me, and I should ride on the right-hand-side of the road from now on.

I also remember the feeling of grave responsibility for being allowed to ride my bike in circumstances requiring a lot of attention to the rules of the road. But every so often, we just had to make a bit of mischief. Whenever the highway department would stretch car counters across the road, we would ride back and forth over them thinking that we were tripping the counters and that we were being counted. I doubt that our weight would trip the counters, but it was a lot of fun thinking we had made a difference.

After I graduated in a class of six students from Jefferson Grade School, I attended and graduated from Weiser High School. The Jefferson and Annex school districts made arrangements to pay tuition to the Weiser school district so students would have a shorter trip to school than had they attended the high school in Ontario. All this made for a shorter day and more opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities.

From Kathryn Turner Baker