School days, part 3

Finally got back to posting some more of my father's notes from when he went to school in Lower Ship Harbour, Nova Scotia. The schoolhouse he describes is the same one I attended, I think, or possibly one built on the same site. I went to that school from about 1950 to early 1954, and I'm guessing that he went there from around 1916 to the early or mid-1920's.

The schoolhouse was not painted, but was whitewashed every few years.

Our school hours were from nine o’clock in the morning to ten forty-five, with fifteen minutes for a recess, when we would play whatever games we could think up, then from eleven to twelve, then home for dinner and back at one until (I think) two forty five, and then fifteen for recess, then back in school from three until four. Sometimes, according to the time of year, it would be rather dusky at four o’clock.

Pupils who lived near enough, as our family did, could go home for dinner. Some who had something like two miles to come would bring their lunch, mostly in a half-gallon lard pail (as I remember). I don’t know what was in the pails but as I know the financial situation of the time, I suspect it was something like a couple of slices of bread and butter, if the family had a cow, which most every family had, or bread and molasses, an egg and a cookie, perhaps an apple as a special treat.

Oranges or bananas were mostly unheard of at that time as a daily treat, but were a speciality in your stocking at Christmas morning with a candy animal in the toe of your stocking, wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. Of course, all this in your Christmas morning stocking was a present from Santa Claus, who was regarded by most all children as a super being, which of course he was, whichever way you want to look at it. And when you know and can realize what the times were like back then, you can understand.

We played as Indians with our bows and arrows, sometimes shooting our arrows up through the woods around the school and sometimes up in the air to see which boy’s arrow could go the longest way. We also had what was called sling shots, two pieces of long string tied to [a] piece of leather with a small hole in it, to hold a small rock. Swing it a few times, then let go of one string (at the right time) we could often throw the rock about three hundred feet.

At home we seemed always to find lots of ways to play and pass the time, and boy or girl, we all had our chores.