Summer School

Ah, cotton vacation! While kids in city schools slaved over books, we on the farm were enjoying cotton vacation. This special time came every fall around September first and continued for about six weeks. This was not a celebration of cotton, but a time when schools closed, freeing children and teenagers to work for their families on the farm during harvest season.

This vacation time didn't come easy. We started the school year around the middle of July. At this time there was no air conditioning in the schools. With 100 degree temperatures outside, it was stifling in the classroom. A big fan on a stand whirled from a corner of the classroom. Large open windows along one side of the classroom let in the warm breeze accompanied by the high pitched singing of cicada and the buzz of wasps and bees in the bushes beneath the windows. The classroom door was always open to increase circulation of the slightest breeze. You could hear the quiet rythm of the voices of other teachers in the building.

The smell of lunches packed in paper bags drifted from the coat room closet that stretched across the back of the room. This closet was closed off by a number of folding doors that reached to the ceiling. An unruly child might find himself isolated behind those folding doors as a time out. The smell of juniper and other evergreens drifted in the open windows and mingled with the smell of chalk, and crayons and pencil lead. Reading, writing and arithmetic filled the morning hours. That and the increasingly warm temperatures lulled us into semiconsciousness.

Lunch was a long time coming. But, when the bell finally rang, we filed out into the warm sun and then sought shade to eat our lunch. Lunch for me was usually a bisquit, egg and or bacon left from breakfast. The steps or the sidewalk along side the building was my favorite place to eat. Recess followed. The boys hurriedly ate and quickly organized a ball game. The girls played jacks on the sidewalk which wore our fingernails to the quick. Swings and slides out in the blazing sun drew a few. Recess over, we lined up to go back into the building. It was torture to wait in line in the hot sun while the boys slowly came in from their makeshift ball field on the far side of the play ground. Then more waiting until the teachers, who were standing in the shade, decided the line was straight enough.

The afternoons were slow and lazy. With lunch time over we rested with our heads on our desks as we listened to Mrs. Conrad read another chapter from some literary classic. The afternoon lessons were more interesting, science, history, social studies and occasionally art, my favorite.

Then came the ride home on the bus. Students of all ages crowded onto the bus. Activities of the day had left everyone hot, sweaty and smelly. The older kids crowed the younger children out of their seats leaving them standing or to find a less desirable place to sit. The only thing that made the ride bearable, was that my older sisters were on the bus. But, juniorhigh and high school boys were also on there. They pulled my pig tails, teased me and fought each other disregarding those in their line of fire. The bus driver was oblivious to the activity behind him. His objective was to deliver his load and get home.

At last the bus stopped at the house on the hill. Book satchel in hand, I scurried down the bus steps, across the dusty road and into the welcome shade of the elm tree in the front yard of the house on the hill. The aroma of something cooking pulled me into the kitchen. Suddenly, I was starving. Today Mama had tea cakes hot from the oven. I spread a little butter on mine. Heavenly! I was home at last.

Home was a place where I could be myself, a place where I didn't have to strive for perfection, a place where I could predict the actions of others and their reactions to me, a place where I was unconditionally loved. Such was the house on the hill.