Karl and Ida: Horace, Vincent, and Adelaide at Eastside School

Horace, Vincent and Adelaide attended Eastside country school that was located about 2 miles Southeast of their home.  The Walseths, Stephens, Gabe and Miller Petersons all had children about the same age and they would take turns hauling kids to school during wet weather or during the cold winter.  The children usually walked home.  Gladys Peterson, the daughter of Gabe Peterson,  recalled an incident that occurred when she was walking home with Adelaide.  It was a cloudy spring day and she had said, “I sure wish the sun would shine.”  Adelaide replied, “It is shining.  If it wasn’t, it would be dark.”  Gladys said that Adelaide was smart in school. 

Evelyn Peterson Hegrenes, the daughter of Miller Peterson, remembered those who attended East Side with her.  They were Ivanette Thyren, Ernest and Victor Erickson, Clarence and Mabel Konickson, Joe, Gladys and Melford Peterson, Horace and Vincent Dalager, Annie and Harold Walseth, and Mary and Henry Rohr. 

Among the things Evelyn remembered from country school were the syrup pail lunch buckets with syrup sandwiches.  When the weather was cold, their apples would freeze.  At school they always played ball and a game called pick-up-sticks.  They also played in the water in the big county ditch across the road from the school especialy in the spring.  The teacher would let them take turns ringing the school bell.  One day a boy tied their teacher, Bertilda Peterson, up with a rope.  Another student helped her get free.

Gladys Peterson and my brother Horace started high school in St. Hilaire in 1928.  Gladys and Horace went to grade school and high school together graduating in 1932.  Prices were really poor and Gladys’ dad, Gabe Peterson, sold a whole load of wheat to buy her class ring that cost $13.00.  Some of the teachers Gladys and Horace had at East-Side were Effie Fredrickson, Nannie Erickson, Miss Votava, Gaberial DeCathelineau, Hazel Dann, Lily Baum, Oscar Brevik, Bertilda Peterson, Ellen Nelson, and Evelyn Peterson.  Oscar Brevik was the son of Tarbjorn & Magnilda Brevik who lived on the farm west and south of the Dalager farm.  Oscar’s siblings were Bernt, Martin, Adolph, John, Mary, Margit, Tilda, Cornelia, and Helen.  The children were good singers and would walk to St. Hilaire to church choir practice, a distance of about 6 miles one way.   Others who lived on the Brevik place were the Brent Walseths, Frank Bothmans, Dan Johnsons, Harry Uttermarks, and Pete Hansons.  The Art Petersons moved to the Brevik place when I was in high school.  Art Peterson’s grandson Neil lives on the place now.

Students at the East-side school that Gladys remembered were Thyrenes, Ericksons, Petersons, Hudelson, Weckworth, Walton, Hogquist, Stephen, Palmquist, Hesse, Durheim, Konickson, Walseth, and Dalager.  There were up to 40 students at the East-side school during the 1920’s.  In a situation like this the older kids had to help the younger one because the teacher couldn’t find enough time to help all of them.  This was really the forerunner of our present day mentor system.  Schoolhouses were not well insulated and Joe Peterson thought that the winters were colder and had more snow in those days.  Gladys Peterson and Helen Hess Simpson remembered hearing wolves howling as they walked to school.  Joe Peterson remembered hunting wolves on horse back and on skis.  Games Gladys and Joe remember playing were fox & geese, drop the handkerchief, ring around the rosy, farmer in the dell, kitten ball and others.  Kids had a good time.  School was the main time that kids got to see others of their age.

Delford Stephens was a real cut-up in school.  Once he pretended he was going to hang himself.  He had tied a rope or wire to the ceiling and was standing on a box or desk with the wire around his neck.  Bertilda Peterson was the teacher at that time.  She really got excited but Delford was only fooling.  When he jumped off the desk he dropped the rope.  He would bring frogs and snakes to school, tease the Thyren girls by sitting by them, etc.  Gladys Peterson said that Gerald Stephens and Thorstein Walseth were the best looking young men in the area.  They were also good friends.  Once when Gladys was swinging, Delford started pushing her.  She would have fallen off but Delford’s brother Bob, who was on the next swing, jumped off his swing and caught her before she fell.  Bob was kind and considerate.

My brother Vincent remembers his first day of school very clearly.  He had dark curly hair which mother had let grow which was not the style at the time.  When he went to school he was teased a lot and it was the last day that he went to school with long hair.  Vincent also told about Delford’s prank with the rope tied to the ceiling but he thought Delford wanted to hang the teacher.  Another time Vince tried to roll a pencil across the isle to his neighbor and the teacher came down the isle with a ruler and hit him on the hand.  Vince said he out foxed her because he hollered real loud so she didn’t keep on too long.  It really didn’t hurt very much.  He thought this teacher was Ellen Nelson who later married Andrew Mortenson.

Members of Vincent’s class at the East side school were Floyd Hesse, Donald Thyren, Cyrus Peterson, Joyce Stephens, Bulah Rinkenberger & Harold Walseth.

One of the tricks they would do in school was to place a 22 cartridge on the stove.  Later on it would go off with a big bang causing a disturbance.  They would also ‘accidentally’ drop a celluloid ring from a horse collar on the stove.  This would smell up the school so badly that it would almost be necessary to close school for the day.

When Vincent was old enough to ride horseback he always rode one of the farm ponies to school.  By this time there was a barn at the school for the horses.

When the weather was nice enough, the East-Side students would play softball or kitten ball all the time.  At that time, Pennington County had a softball tournament in the spring when all the rural schools got together to play softball.  They usually had about 5 boys on the team and the rest were girls.  One year they were playing a team from up north made up of all big guys and they were tromping the Eastside team.  The boys from East Side didn’t like this very well so the 4 boys decided to challenge the other team all by themselves.  There were so few on their team that as soon as they got home it was their turn to bat again.  They only had a pitcher, a catcher, a first baseman and one fielder.  However, with only 4 players they were able to beat the other team.  This county sports event also included races, broad jump, pole vaults etc.

Vincent couldn’t remember his 7^th grade teacher’s name but she let them do anything they wanted to do.  If it were a nice day, they would jump out the window and go for a ride on their horses.  She had a model A Ford car.  In the spring when it was muddy, the boys would ride their horses in front of her car when she was driving to school on the wet road and plaster her car with mud.  Vince said that he and his friends were the meanest guys you ever saw.