School Days at Sister Butte
Like all farm families, the Haverfields were busy from dawn to dusk. In the early morning after sunrise, Percy and Lyman did the milking and carried buckets of milk from the barns to the kitchen. In winter, the milk was put in jars in the root cellar and in summer in the wooden box in Rock Creek. The cream would rise to the top of the jars, and then Ruth and Edna Fern took turns skimming it off and churned it into butter. Bob might have been gathering the eggs and helping Edna Fern carry water and firewood into the busiest room in the house—the kitchen.
Once breakfast was eaten and lunches were made, the children saddled their horses and rode off to school together. By this time, the four school-aged children—Lyman, Ruth, Edna Fern, and Bob—rode together the five miles north and west up a small valley to Sister Butte School. They were all good riders by then.
Once breakfast was eaten and lunches were made, the children saddled their horses and rode off to school together. By this time, the four school-aged children—Lyman, Ruth, Edna Fern, and Bob—rode together the five miles north and west up a small valley to Sister Butte School. They were all good riders by then.
Edna Fern riding Chestnut.
Edna Fern remembered riding a stallion named Chestnut. Percy had trained this horse well and used him to help with all the work; Chestnut could do anything. Lela said, “He was good with kids. I herded cattle with him when I was just a little kid of five or six. He was a wonderful horse.”
Edna Fern enjoyed telling this story about herself: “Ruth was always bigger and stronger than I was, and she was more practical so was given the hard jobs. One day Ruth felt tired of making the school lunch so she said, ‘Why can’t Edna do it for a change?’ I agreed. It was rather fun to make the sandwiches with thick cuts of meat and pile them gently in our lunch box, an empty lard pail.
“Of course we didn’t have an orange or apple but I put in extra sandwiches made with jam for a treat. We were riding horseback that day and I had to keep changing from hand to hand my very heavy pail of lunch. By the time we got to school after our five-mile ride, both hands were tired and I wondered how Ruth did that every day.
“As the noon hour came nearer, I looked forward to enjoying the lunch I’d made and finally I proudly got it from the cloakroom and handed it to Ruth to divide among the four of us, including brothers Bob and Lyman. Ruth opened it and there staring back at us was half a pail full of lard. No wonder it had been heavy—I had picked up the wrong lard pail from the table! I ran outside but Ruth caught me and gave me a scolding and a swat. It would have been punishment enough just having to carry the pail of lard home again, my skinny arms aching.
“Our special friends, the Fagan girls, found it all amusing and shared what they had for lunch, but of course they had just brought enough for themselves so both families went hungry that afternoon. I think it is wonderful that three of those girls—Adeline, Norma, and [indecipherable]—still write to me and they are still the ones with whom I share my joys and hurts. Adeline and I used to tell each other our special secrets, such as when I was 12 and I whispered to her my secret that I was going to marry Ernest Anderson when I grew up.”
Edna Fern enjoyed telling this story about herself: “Ruth was always bigger and stronger than I was, and she was more practical so was given the hard jobs. One day Ruth felt tired of making the school lunch so she said, ‘Why can’t Edna do it for a change?’ I agreed. It was rather fun to make the sandwiches with thick cuts of meat and pile them gently in our lunch box, an empty lard pail.
“Of course we didn’t have an orange or apple but I put in extra sandwiches made with jam for a treat. We were riding horseback that day and I had to keep changing from hand to hand my very heavy pail of lunch. By the time we got to school after our five-mile ride, both hands were tired and I wondered how Ruth did that every day.
“As the noon hour came nearer, I looked forward to enjoying the lunch I’d made and finally I proudly got it from the cloakroom and handed it to Ruth to divide among the four of us, including brothers Bob and Lyman. Ruth opened it and there staring back at us was half a pail full of lard. No wonder it had been heavy—I had picked up the wrong lard pail from the table! I ran outside but Ruth caught me and gave me a scolding and a swat. It would have been punishment enough just having to carry the pail of lard home again, my skinny arms aching.
“Our special friends, the Fagan girls, found it all amusing and shared what they had for lunch, but of course they had just brought enough for themselves so both families went hungry that afternoon. I think it is wonderful that three of those girls—Adeline, Norma, and [indecipherable]—still write to me and they are still the ones with whom I share my joys and hurts. Adeline and I used to tell each other our special secrets, such as when I was 12 and I whispered to her my secret that I was going to marry Ernest Anderson when I grew up.”
The Haverfield children were disappointed that Ernest and the other school-age Anderson boys—Gene, Cliff, and Boyd—did not ride with them to Sister Butte School. The Andersons lived just south of the Sister Butte boundary, and so they rode six miles south and east through a ridge of hills to Macworth School. But during the coldest months of the year the children of both families stayed home learning with their mothers supervising their correspondence courses. This kept Pluma and Aquina and all farm mothers busy with their children at this time. As the winter darkness descended early, the students sat at tables lit by kerosene lamps; the day’s lessons and chores had to be done before the cards and board games came out in the evenings.
Edna Fern wrote, “I terribly missed seeing my friends during this time. Each school day was like a party to me because I would be with my friends and we shared personal stories and teased each other and joked around. One day, we excitedly told our school friends that Mother had helped our neighbor, Aquina Anderson, with the birth of her baby boy Jim the night before” (May 29th, 1927).
Most women went to the home of a nurse in the community or to the maternity home in La Fleche to have their babies, but this baby must have come sooner than expected. Just after midnight one May morning, Leonard Anderson knocked on the Haverfield’s door saying that his wife was in labor and asked for Pluma’s help. Edna Fern remembered, “Mother got dressed and went with him in his car to help her friend Aquina with the delivery of baby number eight, her fifth son. At breakfast we heard that all had gone well.”
One of Edna Fern’s more traumatic stories was told to her own children to try to make us think before we acted: “Twice a year, Ruth and I each got a new dress. The prettiest dress I have ever owned was purple with an enormous collar of gold lace, more like a cape. It was for special occasions only, but I couldn’t bear for my friends not to see it. So I hid it in some bushes beside the creek. When we went to school in the buggy the next day, we stopped at that spot and I quickly changed from my old dress and put on the new one. (When the roads were dry, we didn’t ride horseback but instead hitched up one of the horses to the buggy instead.)
“I felt so elegant in that dress, and it was a good thing that all of my friends had a chance to admire my dress that day as disaster struck on the way home. We were going down a hill with Ruth driving the horse when the rim of a wheel came off and rolled ahead. Not thinking, I said, ‘I want to get that!’ and jumped over the spokes of the wheel that was still turning. The spokes caught in my precious dress and tore it all to pieces.
“I wasn’t hurt except for my pride and conscience, and that night Mother never said a word; she knew I had been sufficiently punished and that the punishment fit the crime. Of course, I had to wear my old dress the rest of the year, for both school and parties.”
Edna Fern wrote, “I terribly missed seeing my friends during this time. Each school day was like a party to me because I would be with my friends and we shared personal stories and teased each other and joked around. One day, we excitedly told our school friends that Mother had helped our neighbor, Aquina Anderson, with the birth of her baby boy Jim the night before” (May 29th, 1927).
Most women went to the home of a nurse in the community or to the maternity home in La Fleche to have their babies, but this baby must have come sooner than expected. Just after midnight one May morning, Leonard Anderson knocked on the Haverfield’s door saying that his wife was in labor and asked for Pluma’s help. Edna Fern remembered, “Mother got dressed and went with him in his car to help her friend Aquina with the delivery of baby number eight, her fifth son. At breakfast we heard that all had gone well.”
One of Edna Fern’s more traumatic stories was told to her own children to try to make us think before we acted: “Twice a year, Ruth and I each got a new dress. The prettiest dress I have ever owned was purple with an enormous collar of gold lace, more like a cape. It was for special occasions only, but I couldn’t bear for my friends not to see it. So I hid it in some bushes beside the creek. When we went to school in the buggy the next day, we stopped at that spot and I quickly changed from my old dress and put on the new one. (When the roads were dry, we didn’t ride horseback but instead hitched up one of the horses to the buggy instead.)
“I felt so elegant in that dress, and it was a good thing that all of my friends had a chance to admire my dress that day as disaster struck on the way home. We were going down a hill with Ruth driving the horse when the rim of a wheel came off and rolled ahead. Not thinking, I said, ‘I want to get that!’ and jumped over the spokes of the wheel that was still turning. The spokes caught in my precious dress and tore it all to pieces.
“I wasn’t hurt except for my pride and conscience, and that night Mother never said a word; she knew I had been sufficiently punished and that the punishment fit the crime. Of course, I had to wear my old dress the rest of the year, for both school and parties.”
Edna Fern (center with hands clasped) with the girls in her class at Sister Butte School, circa 1925.
Edna Fern remembered a lot about her school years at Sister Butte. “Besides loving to be with my friends at school, I was also thrilled to be learning to read and write. (I wasn’t so thrilled with learning arithmetic and geography, though, and later wished I had paid more attention.) One teacher taught forty students, grades one to eight, and this was so difficult that teachers seldom stayed a second year. They would take out their frustrations in various ways: one teacher threw chalk at us, a more creative teacher played a harmonica to entertain us.
“When the weather was good in the summer and fall, we always played softball and pom-pom-pullaway (a kind of tag) and had races. In the winter we played fox and geese. Once in a while, a fight would break out, but not often. Children knew that their punishment at home would be much more severe than that at school, even if the teacher did use the strap on their small hands. There was a school picnic every year, and that was the one time when we each received a nickel to buy an ice-cream cone.
“Every accomplishment of mine earned mother’s praise, and this meant more to me than praise from anyone else. When I was in the school programs, reciting a monologue or poem, her face would beam with pride. But the most excited I ever saw her was one day at the Wood Mountain Sports when someone showed her a newspaper that had printed all of the names of the students who had passed their grade-eight exams.
“When Mother saw Edna Fern Gladys Haverfield on the list, she grabbed me and whirled me around, jumping up and down. I felt great about that, until it occurred to me that she couldn’t have had much faith in my passing the exams. But it was a happy moment, and today I’d rather think that she was just proud because it meant so much to her that we all got a good education.”
“When the weather was good in the summer and fall, we always played softball and pom-pom-pullaway (a kind of tag) and had races. In the winter we played fox and geese. Once in a while, a fight would break out, but not often. Children knew that their punishment at home would be much more severe than that at school, even if the teacher did use the strap on their small hands. There was a school picnic every year, and that was the one time when we each received a nickel to buy an ice-cream cone.
“Every accomplishment of mine earned mother’s praise, and this meant more to me than praise from anyone else. When I was in the school programs, reciting a monologue or poem, her face would beam with pride. But the most excited I ever saw her was one day at the Wood Mountain Sports when someone showed her a newspaper that had printed all of the names of the students who had passed their grade-eight exams.
“When Mother saw Edna Fern Gladys Haverfield on the list, she grabbed me and whirled me around, jumping up and down. I felt great about that, until it occurred to me that she couldn’t have had much faith in my passing the exams. But it was a happy moment, and today I’d rather think that she was just proud because it meant so much to her that we all got a good education.”
Fox and Geese, painting by William Kurelek.