Submitter’s note: This story was written by Alma Lucas of her memories as a former student of the Dewar one-room school.
When I was a child, my family lived in a modest little farmhouse on what is now the new highway about halfway between the T.C. Steele residence, studio and gallery, and the Deckard Cemetery near Belmont. The road dead-ends at the cemetery because of its proximity to Lake Monroe. We were fortunate because we lived less than a half-mile from the school. It was called District No. 8 Dewar School. Some children had to walk long distances.
The school was a one-room structure with a belfry and a big bell that was rung by pulling a rope, and it summoned us in the morning and also to return to our desks after morning and afternoon recess. The schoolhouse met its demise, as did our house and several others, when most of that territory for some distance around was sold to the state. We had not lived there for years when this occurred, and I had gone to Fairview School in Bloomington.
Dewar School was surrounded by forest except for a large area, in a sort of circle that had been cleared for a playground and for parking horse-drawn vehicles, because the building served the dual purpose of a school and town hall meeting place. The public dirt road ran along the front of the building.
We could play on the opposite side of the road, but the ground was smoother and there was more room in the back of the school. The ground was bare and solid because it had been patted down by so many feet, both large and small.
The teacher taught grades one to eight. By today’s standards, he would have to be a miracle worker — and he usually was. I say “he” because teachers were usually men. However, my sister, Sophia Vossmeyer, taught there one year.
We always had good teachers. At least they got results 99 percent of the time without using any of the “persuaders” which grew so profusely there in the forest. These were used infrequently at home on one or another of the five children. At any rate, we weren’t familiar with the expression, “Johnny can’t read,” because Johnny always read, and pretty soon after his first encounter with any or all of the teachers. We didn’t know anything about slow learners, unteachables or dyslexias. Don’t get me wrong; we weren’t all child prodigies and we weren’t all angels, but if one didn’t read or function pretty well in every other area, someone knew the reason why. The proof of the pudding came at the finish line when we all had to go elsewhere and take part in an all-day written examination usually presided over by the superintendent. This determined whether or not we were ready for high school, and I don’t know of any failures.
The school had a blackboard in the front of the room, and in the left-hand corner was the teacher’s desk and in the right-hand corner was a bookcase of library books. The desks and seats for the smaller children were in the front. Some desks were considerably larger and wider to seat two pupils together. The center ones were on either side of the stove similar to a Franklin stove. There was a section of still higher and wider desks and seats; these accommodated two larger pupils. We hung our coats and caps on nails on the wall in the back of the room. The boys used one side and the girls the other. There was a rack for the lunch pails. We could scarcely eat our lunches because of anticipation of a longer time to play at noon.
We played baseball and ante over. In the latter, we would divide the group and have half on one side of the building and half on the other. One side had the ball. The other side would call “ante over” until the ball would come over the roof. No one would know when to expect it and there was a scramble to catch it. Then the process would be reversed.
In the winter when there was snow we played fox and geese. This game plan is made by making a large circle with a double set of tracks together in the snow, bisected two ways with the center being the base. This is also a running game of run and catch.
On the last day of school, all studies were suspended and the day was devoted to fun and games, a feast of goodies on long tables at noon, a spelling bee and reciting our poems and pieces we had learned. Being a devotee of Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, I recited one of his unpublished poems which went as follows: “I’ve been a visitin’ about a week, up to my cousin’s at Williams Creek, I got the hives and a new straw hat, and I’m going back where my beau lives at.”
— Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
