4-H came to my rural community about two years after World War II ended. We had no other youth organizations available, so 4-H, led by two wonderful (female and male) county Extension agents, made a huge impact on us children—and our parents.

As I recall, the whole community met at New Hope School (grades one through eight) to hear the agents describe the program and recruit adult volunteers to lead projects teaching practical skills ranging from sewing to raising calves. Then all the dozen or so kids nine or older signed up, elected officers (an unfamiliar task), and took the pamphlets home to choose their projects. Being only eight, I envied my older sister and listened closely to discussions there and at home.

My mother studied the materials thoroughly, for volunteer leaders had to master and teach the standards 4-H set for each project. A former teacher, she had been making our clothing for years, but she felt that she needed the guidance the pamphlets and the agent provided. I later realized that 4-H educated parents as well as children.

By my ninth birthday, I had memorized the 4-H pledge, learned basic parliamentary procedure (a boon forever), and reconciled myself to tackling cooking and sewing projects rather raising a calf. I didn’t mind making biscuits and cakes, but I preferred to leave the sewing to my big sister, who loved it. The first year was basic: threading and operating our treadle sewing machine, using paper patterns to cut cloth, sewing straight seams in such items as tea towels and pillow slips. To my dismay, my mother made me redo everything until it was perfect.

The second year the project got harder. I came to hate sewing. I liked going to the feedstore and choosing the sacks for my practice rounds of shorts, blouses, and skirts, but the summer heat turned cutting and fitting and putting in and taking out imperfect seams into torture. I suffered through five summers of sewing projects. I earned blue ribbons at the fair for blouses with button holes and dresses with zippers and for judging others’ work. The successes didn’t compensate for the time robbed from reading and playing outdoors.

4-H taught me many other useful skills, including how to give a demonstration, how to speak in public, how to work with a group, and how to do well a job I didn’t like.

And I’ve never forgotten the pledge: I pledge my Head to clearer thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Hands to larger service, and my Health to better living for my club, my community, and my country.

—Carolyn Mulford

In the 1940s, my sisters and I sometimes wore feedsack dresses, blouses, and skirts to the one-room school a half mile from our farm. Our family had a history there. My grandmother’s family had donated the land for the school, my father had received his eight years of education there, and my mother had met him while teaching there and spending her summers taking undergraduate courses.

On a typical day, we rushed to school to play a few minutes before the teacher rang the handbell at 8:55 for our 9 o’clock start. In mild weather, the dozen or so pupils in grades one through eight said the Pledge of Allegiance outside facing the flag.

We seated ourselves at old wood-and-metal double desks with the youngest children in the front rows. Each desktop had a hole for an inkwell, but the bottles of ink for our little-used fountain pens usually went onto the open shelf underneath with our few books, Big Chief tablets, pencils, and crayons.

The teacher had a big wood desk up front. Blackboards filled the back wall, and rolled-up maps of the world and the United States could be pulled down when needed. Big casement windows lined the north and south sides of the room. The left front corner hosted the World Book Encyclopedia and the pencil sharpener. An upright piano occupied the right front corner. In the back were a coal stove, coat hooks, and two metal cabinets containing textbooks and recreational reading.

Classes began with the first graders going to the teacher’s desk to read aloud from Dick and Jane books. The rest of us studied for our lessons to come, each class taking its turn with the teacher until the first recess. In that 15 minutes we raced to the outhouses (one for boys, one for girls) at the edge of the schoolyard, pumped water for a drink from the well beside the school, and enjoyed minutes on the swings, see-saw, or slide.

Then we returned inside for arithmetic, usually checking problems we’d completed on paper and working others on the blackboard. To cut down on the number of classes, the teacher taught fifth grade and seventh grade one year and sixth grade and eighth grade the next—except for arithmetic. That had to be studied in sequence.

Other major subjects were spelling, history, science, and geography. When a school program, such as a pie supper, was coming up, we adde music—mostly singing or playing little flutes called Tonettes or such rhythm band instruments as sticks, blocks of wood covered in sandpaper, bells, a triangle, and a drum.

Precisely at noon we ate lunch, typically soup from a thermos or a bologna or peanut butter sandwich, a piece of fruit, and cookies. In good weather we played outdoor games that kids of all ages could play, including group tag, May I, andy (ante) over, and baseball. In bad weather we often played jacks (using up to 40) or pick-up sticks on the teacher’s desk.

At 1 p.m., we took our seats, and the teacher read a chapter from a novel. In first grade I was spellbound by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain remains one of my favorite writers.

We all looked forward to Friday afternoons. We cleaned the school and then chose teams for contests—finding places on the maps, working arithmetic problems on the blackboard, and holding a railroad spelling bee. In the last, a team captain spells railroad, and the other captain spells a word beginning with the final letter (d). The team members take turns spelling words beginning with the last letter of the last word spelled. Little kids could compete with the older ones by spelling simple words, especially ones that ended in x. Failure to think of a word or to spell it correctly eliminated the speller. The team with the last speller standing won.

The day ended at 4 p.m. No one stuck around to play. We all had chores—gathering eggs, pumping water, shelling corn, feeding animals—waiting for us at home.

The one-room schools in my county closed in the early 1950s right after my younger sister graduated from the eighth grade. With the school population dwindling and resources limited, the schools were no longer economically viable. From then on, the country kids rode school buses to schools in town.

Some schoolhouses survived a few years as community centers, private homes, or storage space for hay. Today you’re no more likely to see a one-room school than you are a feedsack dress.

—Carolyn Mulford