District 44 in Brown County
Submitted by Genevieve (Hill) Netz
I grew up in the Nebraska Sandhills and went to one-room country school from kindergarten through eighth grade. When I was in kindergarten and first grade, we lived out in the hills about ten miles south of Johnstown in Brown County. My older brother and I were the only children in the school district.
The little schoolhouse had been built on sled runners so it could be pulled by a tractor to any site in the district ) that would be convenient for the children who were enrolled. Since we were the only kids in school, the schoolhouse had been moved across the road from our house.
My mother, Doris (Sees) Hill was our teacher. (She was fully licensed by the State of Nebraska and had taught for five years before she and my dad married. ) She didn't particularly want to be our teacher as she considered the lack of exposure to "outsiders" detrimental to our social development, but no one else wanted to come out in the hills for the small salary.
Previously, the school had been taught by a Miss Ingerson. I have only a few scraps of memory of her and I don't know how many years she taught it or where the school was located then. I believe we were in District 44, but I could be wrong.
Anyway, we went to the schoolhouse every day with our mother and had school. She was very dedicated to having "real school" for us. We had a regular schedule that we followed. School started at 9:00 a.m. We went home for dinner at 12:00, and then came back to the afternoon session (1:00 -4:00 p.m.) At recess time, my mother made me do a braid or tie a bow before she'd let me go outside to play. I remember this vividly.
I remember that once a small airplane flew over quite low in the sky and Mama let us go outside to watch it. (This was an unusual sight!) Another out-of-the-ordinary event that I recall was the visit of Esther Miller, the Brown County Superintendent of Schools. She listened to me read a story, and she was wearing a bracelet of pretty polished stones. I also remember going to the elementary school in Ainsworth and standing in line to get a polio shot.
When we moved from that ranch and left that little schoolhouse behind, it was very upsetting to me. I hated leaving the little wind-up phonograph and the stack of red 78-rpm records, and I was sad that I couldn't take the books that I liked. I remember the Alice and Jerry readers and another series that had a book in it titled, "Through the Green Gate" with stories that I really liked about an organ grinder and his little monkey.