Rural Life in the ’40s

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

RURAL LIFE IN THE ‘40s

Although many older Kansans walked on dirt roads and across dusty fields for a mile or more to a country schoolhouse, my generation missed out on the one-room experience.

My school, which opened in 1956, had more than 30 rooms. When I was a kid, Pawnee Rock educated its children, K-12, in a block-long brick building.

For those of us who didn’t open our arithmetic books in a wooden or stone country school with a bell on top, Ken Ohm is here to tell us what those days were like.

Ohm, of Topeka, attended two such schools. He began his education at Sunnyside School near Winfield where his dad worked in the oil fields. Later, his family moved to the Olpe area where he attended Stony Ridge School.

He writes about life in the 1940s and about his grade school days in “Spatzies and Brass BBs: Life in a One-Room Country School.”

Ohm is a retired professor. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Emporia State University and his doctorate from the University of Wyoming. He taught at several colleges, most recently teaching science and mathematics at Washburn University.

Writing on dozens of topics, Ohm describes everyday events like walking to school, subjects studied, what was in the lunch pail, as well as mentioning ordinary things such as the school’s outhouse, its horse stall and coal shed.

My own grade school teachers had many responsibilities, but firing up a classroom stove in the morning was not one of them. Ohm describes the stove this way: “It warmed the school, dried wet clothes and heated water. It was wood or coal-burning, about four feet high and accurately described as ‘pot-bellied.’ For students close to the stove, the heat could rise to become nearly unbearable, while at the far corners of the room the temperature could fall to almost freezing.”

During recesses, he and his classmates played games of hide-and-seek, crack the whip, fox and geese, and Annie-over, in which they would toss a ball over the roof of the schoolhouse.

In addition to school topics, Ohm writes about such things as butchering hogs and chickens, dust devils and tornadoes. In the piece called “Tornado Alley,” he tells about a storm cave his parents dug at their home near Winfield.

Because his dad worked long hours in the oil fields, “Mom did most of the digging, the first part of the job accomplished with just a shovel. It didn’t take long, however, to reach several layers of rock and from that point on, Mom used the pick for hours at a time. When a depth of about seven feet was reached, Dad constructed concrete walls and floor – along with a drain – into a gravel base within the eight-by-ten foot hole.”

And they were grateful for this shelter. On the day they were moving from the property, their belongings packed in a truck, they ducked into that storm cellar when a twister hit. The tornado shoved the house off of its foundation and put several holes into the roof.

The woman who dug much of that cellar, Ohm’s mother, Leona, is now 93 and still does volunteer work at Newman Regional Health where she once headed the housekeeping department.

“Spatzies and Brass BBs” is Ohm’s first book. His second book, “Ducks Across the Moon: Life on Eighty Acres in the Flint Hills,” focuses on daily life on his family’s farm west of Olpe.

In 1944, his family moved from the Winfield area to the edge of the Flint Hills. At first they lived with his maternal grandfather and later moved to a nearby farm of their own.

In “Ducks Across the Moon,” his stories cover such topics as shocking and thrashing wheat, building haystacks, hunting skunks, and only one coyote hunt. He also writes about water witchers, slopping the hogs, a Victory Garden, wash days, and ice skating.

For those of us who weren’t around in the ‘40s, Ohm does a nice job of describing daily farm life back then. And for those who did experience the good old days, these books will likely bring back many pleasant memories.

When the State Library of Kansas announced its 150 Best Kansas Books list in January, both of Ohm’s books were on that list. These books are available at Town Crier Bookstore.

Copyright 2011 ~ Cheryl Unruh