D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
October
2008
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Voice of a Ranch Woman Tenth in a Series |
When Chalk Was Precious
Memories of one-room schoolhouses, lard-bucket lunchpails and walking home, yes, in a snowstorm.
By Linda McDonald, as told to Victoria Tester
This first-person reminiscence is excerpted from recordings of Linda Nielson McDonald at her home on the McDonald Ranch. Established in 1903, the McDonald Ranch is among the five oldest continuously working ranches in Grant County. Linda McDonald, born in Moab, Utah, in 1942, is the wife of Jerry McDonald, the son of Jonnie McDonald and Evelyn McCauley. These recordings are a collaboration between McDonald and author Victoria Tester, whose book Miracles of Sainted Earth (University of New Mexico Press) won the nationally recognized Willa Cather Literary Award. Their efforts mark the beginning of a project by the two women to record and publish a book of oral histories of ranch women in southern New Mexico.
There was an old prospector that would go to town, and he'd get drunk. When he came back home, driving his mules, he'd forget where his turnoff was. That's one story about how White Signal got its name — the prospector would pile white rocks up there as a signal where he was supposed to turn to go home.
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The McDonald School operated 1913-1925. |
Grandpa McDonald said what brought the people into the White Signal area was the Homestead Acts. He said families would take up homesteads of — first it was 160 acres, next it was 320 acres they could get, and then it was 440 acres. Then about 1922, the homesteads were 640 acres.
Between 1905 and 1920, they were having a series of wet spells here and families could farm and make a living. But when the weather became normal again, they starved out and sold their homesteads to the local ranchers.
During those good times, because there were so many people in the community, there were schools around in different areas.
The very first school we had here in the White Signal area was the White House School. There were eight children who attended that school. It started in 1907, and it didn't last but about a year.
The first actual school building they had was up at White Signal in 1909. It was real close to where the White Signal store was. Grandpa wasn't born yet, but his two older brothers and his sisters were. Their parents, Mitchel and Jeremiah (Jerry) McDonald, knew they needed an education.
Back in those days, people would ship their cattle together and a buyer would come in and buy them all. So they'd taken these cattle to Silver City to ship, and Mr. J. L. (Fate) McCauley was kind of a new man in the community. Grandpa Jonnie said his father Jerry had taken a liking to Mr. McCauley, and they were down at the Murray Hotel, and there was a bar there called the Clubhouse Bar. It had a hammock out under some trees, and his father and Mr. McCauley were out in this hammock. I guess they'd been imbibing a little.
Jeremiah said to Mr. McCauley, "We need a school, and you're a young man. You're not married yet and you don't have any children. But you will have, and you've got some stepbrothers that need to go to school. But we can never get people to donate to build a school building! But I'll tell you what, you've got a lot of energy and you've got a lot of friends. You start out and you sell the people that we need a dance hall. Then you get the contributions."
Well, he sold Mr. McCauley on this idea, and he started soliciting funds — he was just getting two and five and 10 dollars — from the cowpunchers and a few people that had families. The families couldn't contribute that much because they needed to feed their children. But within two months he had enough money for the building.
Grandpa McDonald said that kind of put 'em in the chips, and they began to give dances, to make more money for this school.
The reason they solicited money for a dancehall was because there were a lot of single cowboys who weren't interested in a school, but would donate for a dancehall. There probably was around a dance a month held there.
When they got the money from the contributions and the dances all together, they propositioned Alvin White, who was the county superintendent from 1901 to 1907. That was before New Mexico became a state, and at that time, Grant County took in Hidalgo County. Anyway, Alvin White was quite sympathetic with them, so he furnished enough money to pay a schoolteacher for seven months, and everything else the people furnished. They had to provide the firewood and the water.
Grandpa's two brothers, Uncle Bartley and Uncle Taylor, went to that school and then his sister started. Back then in these country schools, they all started when they were five, because they had to have so many students to keep the school open. Grandpa's two brothers and sister had to ride four miles horseback on their own to go to school. Then Grandpa McDonald finally got a one-horse buggy for them to go in.
They had to take their own lunches, and Grandpa said the schools eventually got up to where they lasted nine months. So they went there until 1915, and then the school ran out of kids, and so then they built a school closer to here, to the ranch, and that was the McDonald School.
These were one-room schools. They tried to build a teacherage for the teacher to live in, but a lot of time these teachers lived with families there, too. The schools were just one room and they'd usually have eight grades.
I myself went to a one-room school up in McFee, Colo., when my dad was working on the ranch for his own dad. My mother was my first-grade teacher, and we lived in the school. I had to call her "Mrs. Nielsen" instead of Mom. That was really awkward. I was sure I was her least-favorite student.
The children took their lunches. They didn't have lunch pails — what they took their lunch in was a lard bucket. I've got some of those buckets over at the Chicken Bunkhouse. They'd take biscuits left over from breakfast. Or a piece of cornbread. Or whatever they had. Fruit, or a piece of ham, because everybody butchered their own pigs. Maybe they'd have some jam on a biscuit, too, for dessert. For a while they didn't have water at these schools and the kids would have to bring their own water.
The McDonald School ran from 1913 to 1925, and there were 24 children that attended through those years. Then we had the Cherry Creek School from 1917 to 1919, and then there was a one-room school over at Walnut Creek, which was the second White Signal School, which ran from 1919 to 1925, and that school burned down. Granny said at the Walnut Creek School they had this great big cottonwood tree and it had this big old limb that went out and she and the other children would get out on that and pretend they were in a ship. That tree has since been struck by lightning and burned up.
Then there was a Harvey Gulch (Cienega) School over here on the C-Bar Ranch, and that school, which was on the C-Bar Canyon, went from 1919 to 1924. Willie Glaze told our White Signal 4-H Club that Otto Prevost was the teacher at the Harvey Gulch School and on Fridays the children would climb to the top of a hill and he would read a story to them.
Actually, our 4-H Club, one of our projects was we put historical markers at all these different schools, to say when they were in operation. The Harvey Gulch School is all washed out now. The draw has changed its channel and it runs right through where that school was.
Nearly all these schools had dances in them. Because that was the people's entertainment. They'd find people somewhere to play for these dances.
There were three schools going on at one time, right after WWI, because of all these people that were in here with the Homestead Act. To begin with, they were glad to get any students. Later, after 1946, they needed to have nine kids to keep the school open. If a family moved, the school board had only over the weekend to find some more students. One year they went to Tyrone to get a family, and teacher Mrs. Rideout would bring them.
The community furnished everything for the school, but the county furnished the chalk. They tell a story about Grandpa J.L. McCauley bringing a box of chalk in his coat horseback from the White Signal store down to the McDonald School. He had to get out and open all those gates and it was snowing, but he had that chalk protected in his coat. It didn't break to pieces. Back then they kept it in wooden boxes and it was very, very precious.
Granny (Evelyn McCauley McDonald) used to tell this story about when Otto Prevost was the teacher and she was going to school. He said, "If another kid breaks a piece of chalk, I am going to whip him." Granny was just five years old or so, and she broke the next piece of chalk. She was so scared she was going to get a whipping she wouldn't tell who broke the chalk. And Mr. Prevost thought it was another kid and that kid got so scared he wet his pants.
Granny went home that night and was feeling so bad she'd broke this piece of chalk, and she told her mom she'd broke that chalk. Her mom says, "Now, Evelyn, you're going to have to go back and tell Mr. Prevost that you did that." So she went back to school the next day and you know she was scared to death, and she motioned for Mr. Prevost to come over and she told him that she broke that chalk.
And he said, "Because you told me the truth, I will not whip you." But chalk was expensive and it was during the Depression, and everybody knew the value of a dollar back then.
Grandpa said the first blackboard they ever had wasn't a very good blackboard. It was kind of like an oil cloth stretched over a board. But he said later they got a better blackboard. And I was just reading a letter that Grandpa wrote to Aunt Jane right after his dad died in the spring of 1922, and he wrote that the teacher was going to get them a new blackboard. So you see, those things were so precious to them. Grandpa said they also brought their own pencils and paper.
They didn't have water because there was no well over there at the McDonald School. But he said they'd get a bucket and they'd get the water down here at the house, because it was just about a quarter of a mile from the McDonald School, and stick a stick through it and two of them would carry that bucket of water over. They all drank out of the same cup. Grandpa said he didn't know anybody that died from it.
The county would furnish $8 a cord to anyone that would haul the wood.
They had a board of education in White Signal, and local members would serve on the school board. It was up to them to find the kids. There was a sad case where one brother accidentally shot the other brother, and that dad had thought it was more of an education for those boys to be out herding goats than going to school. So not all parents thought education was important.
One time, during WWI, Grandpa said they had an influx of children. They had 18 children in one room. There wasn't hardly standing room. Yet some of those boys were 18 years old, and Grandpa said he didn't think they were taught too well because they weren't too patriotic.
They had an 18-year-old teacher from Albuquerque, who was quite timid. Some of these unpatriotic children came in one day. They'd washed their hands, and they went over and dried them on the flag. Grandpa said there was smoke on the water after that. This little teacher expelled them all, and they went home and told their dad. Grandpa said his own father and Marvin Poe and Charlie Morrell were on the school board, and this necessitated a school board meeting and the parents were to come. When the meeting was over, the parents and the kids who'd dried their hands on the flag went home and never did come back.
Grandpa (Jonnie McDonald) said his last year the McDonald School had only five students, and he got the measles so they had to close it down and he went to White Signal. In those days they sent out state examinations, and they'd give you three chances to pass it — one in March, one in April and one in May. Grandpa took the test at White Signal. Of all the children that ever graduated from the eighth grade, they never had one that ever failed that test the first time. Grandpa said he thought that was a compliment to the one-room school.
After that, Grandpa went to high school in Virden, NM, and did his senior year in Silver City. They had a bus, and Fred Prevost drove the school bus. So after they graduated from the eighth grade they'd ride the bus into high school.
There's lots of stories about those teachers that taught in these schools. There was one teacher who kept being late. She was late a lot. So she came in to school one time and there were no kids there. They'd gone up and climbed Tullock's Peak, a hill there right by the White Water turn-off. She went over to the McCauleys and said, "Well, where's all the children?" Grandma McCauley got really upset about that and said, "Well, where are they? Why weren't you there?"
Granny talks about coming home from school, because they'd walk home. Maybe it was a mile from that school to her house. She talked about it snowing so hard that they couldn't see. Granny got snow-blind and couldn't see where she was going, and Uncle Jim and Aunt Bertha went off and left her. Her dad, J.L. McCauley, came by in the wagon and picked her up, but would not pick the older kids up. Grandma McCauley was angry with the older kids for leaving her.
When Jerry was going to school at the last White Signal School, their teacher was Ruth Rideout, and she was a crackerjack teacher, a really good teacher. She had a son, Hugh Rideout, who was about Jerry's age, and they were at recess, out there playing a game. They had a piece of tin they'd propped up there, and they had yucca poles and they were pole-vaulting over it.
Hugh pole-vaulted over it and knocked the tin down. And Jerry, being the big dodo of the school, went over there and said, "You're gonna put that back up!" Of course Hugh was the new kid, and Jerry was just going to make him put that right back up.
Hugh said he wouldn't do it.
And Jerry says, "You are going to put that up!"
Well, that yucca pole that Hugh broke when he pole-vaulted had a pointed end on it, so Hugh stuck it in a piece of cactus and broke it off and swatted Jerry up the side of the face with that cactus!
Jerry says, "You know, we were the best of friends after that. He never did put that tin back up."