A LIFE'S WORTH OF MEMORIES OF WEST VIRGINIA

Laverne Mercer  − March 23, 1984

   As I am well in my sixties I think it is worth the effort to leave behind some of the memories of my seventeen and one half years I actually lived in Tyler County.

   I am old enough to remember when the doctor come by horseback and at times stayed all night.  I am old enough to know that life can be wonderful.

   The school bell rang twice each day, five days a week, at 8:45 and 12:45.  The teacher stood on the school porch, dressed for the weather and rang the gleaming brass handbell vigorously so it could be heard over the many dips and swells of the hills of West Virginia.

   My brothers, sisters and I were always searching for chestnuts, blueberries, or hickory nuts in their season when it rang.  With open coats flying in the wind and lard pails as dinner buckets banging our knees, we ran, skipped just short of being late.

   We would shed our coats, scarves, caps and galoshes, put our dinner buckets in our favorite place and very quietly − on our tiptoes − took our seats as were assigned to us and settled down to the quiet of the schoolroom.

    The school consisted of one large room.  As you entered, the boys used the right rear wall for coats and hats and the girls used the left.  One entrance door, −the teachers desk, blackboard, bookcase, forty desk seats and a large pot-bellied stove.  Outside coal house and two privies.  After I started they drilled a well and put an outside water hand pump in.

   There was mud everywhere except a large surface flatrock here and there where the rain had washed away the deep rutted road.  It was known as the Ross Run road and was traveled mostly by those living on the hillside farms and along the run that emptied into the Middle Island Creek at Joseph Mills, Tyler County.

   As the county was among the poorest in the state, I remember three years we were cut from our six months term to three month terms due to lack of teachers funds.  Two of which started Oct. 1st and ended Jan. 1st.  One which started Jan. 1st and ended Apr. 1st.

   My first teacher was Ora C. Riggs, followed by George R. Moore, then by Cleryl W. Gregg.  They seemed to my recollection to be eight feet tall.  Law and order was the best medicine to take to heart.  The greatest annoyance was the scuffling of the feet on the wooden floor and the honking and blowing of noses.

   I remember one incident we all held our breath to wait the outcome.  Mr. Moore caught one student threatening the mis-use of a knife.  He was a big husky sixteen year old boy and not one to give in too easy.  Mr. Moore sent him to the swamp to cut and bring him back a three quarter inch by four foot long willow.  When he returned the willow didn't suit, so he removed his hickory paddle from his drawer and give him the paddling of his life.

   Classes usually started with the first grade reading, followed by spelling and arithmetic.  First and second grades were allowed to set with older girls and they choosed who they wanted to help teach and care for.  They helped teach us to read and spell.  They also watched out for us on the playground.

   There was very little difference that showed between wealth and poverty.  My earliest memory was the clothes and the lunches.  Some carried tin or aluminum buckets with a tray for desert and others had brown paper bags or lard pails.  Day after day many brought two biscuit or cornbread sandwiches with jelly, white or brown sugar and if lucky home-cured bacon or side meat.  Sometimes maybe a cookie or an apple.

   A large potbellied stove stood in the middle of the room and was fired by coal.  Another incident I will long remember.  When I was in the sixth grade I took the job of janitor and had to cut new kindling for every morning and sweep the floors every evening.  One evening as I was sweeping after everyone had left I run the broom back under the stove and one of the legs fell out of place.  The stove, red hot, fell to the floor along with five joints of eight inch pipe fell across the seats.  With all the sulpher, coal smoke and soot, I was lucky to reach the coal bucket.  I emptied it on the floor, ran for the pump but couldn't pump water fast enough.  I broke the ice on the stream that run in front of the school, (Ross Run) and when the first bucket-full hit the fire it more or less exploded.  It showered me with soot and sulpher, − white smoke.  The floor was already blazing high due to the oiled condition of the wood.  After several trips to the stream I could tell I was gaining, −I couldn't see anything inside but knew if I didn't keep up the pace it would go up in smoke.  I stayed with it until almost dark and all I could see was just steam.

   I stopped by Grandma's on my way home and she couldn't believe her eyes.  Said, "I looked like a coal miner."  She wanted to call and tell the teacher Mr. Moore but I begged her out of it.  I felt that I had done something wrong.  I told her, "I would go early the next morning and tell him myself when he come."

   Next morning I left an hour early and as being winter, wasn't daylight yet.  It was below zero and I had two mile to walk.

   When I arrived, there was two foot of ice and cinders in the stove area and the stove in three pieces froze to the floor.  When Mr. Moore and about ten kids come from down the run, I was chopping ice and cinders with a hand ax.  He sent the kids back home, helped me set the stove back up, build a fire and clean up.

   As we were leaving he congratulated me for a fine job of saving the school

   The pay for janitor was twelve dollars every three months.

   Every spring on a nice warm day the teacher would take us all on a hike to the Buzzard Rocks for a picnic lunch.  We all looked forward to that.

   Most boys wore hawk-billed caps, knee pants, high top boots and hand-me-down coats.

   The girls wore homemade dresses, underwear, tie shoes, coats, tams and mittens.  Long underwear was ordered from a catalog or bought at the country store and worn from Oct. until May and by that time wear and tear had taken it's toll, −leaving buttons missing, holes in the knees, and raveling sleeves.  The union suits, now known as long johns had dark stains on the chest by spring due to bouts with croup, colds or whooping cough.  The stains came from the remedies of the day, − a concoction of onion poultices, axle grease, or a mixture of turpentine and camphor, − also rendered skunk fat.

   In 1980 I had the occasion to stop by the old Ross Run school.  I was saddened to see the porch roof drooping, some of the windows boarded up, and the ones that were left had green mildew around their edges.  I had to push away the briars and brush to take a peek in a window.  On the floor where the stove had set I could see three scars burned deep into the wood.  The memories it brought back was worth any change to come.

   I know my teachers and many classmate are gone and the rest scattered, but I think how fortunate I was to have spent my early learning years in a one room school, in a time when all things seemed so beautiful.

Webmaster's Note:  Franklin Laverne Mercer passed away in 1997.  The Ross Run School building has been moved and now sits on the front lawn of the Tyler County Museum in Middlebourne, WV.