Saunders County District 50 at Ithaca
 

The schoolhouse was located at the top of the hill on the north end of town. When I started in first grade (there was no kindergarten yet) in the fall of 1947 when I was six, it was an 8-grade school. The first through fourth grades met in the east room, fifth through eighth in the west room on the main floor. We had the old desks that were screwed to the floor with the seat that folded down and the desk attached to the back of the seat in front.


 When my dad attended this school there were ten grades, the two high school grades using the second floor. By 1947 two bathrooms had been installed and the outhouses were gone, leaving only two depressions in the ground on the east edge of the school grounds to mark where they had been. The girls’ bathroom was put in the hall outside the “little kids” room. The stairs took up a matching space outside the “big kids” room so the boys’ bathroom was put in upstairs. We were told we could not go upstairs because this was an old building and it was not safe to go up there any more. The floor might not hold us. But the boys got to go up there so they could use the bathroom, why couldn’t the girls?

 

One time we all got to go up to the second floor because there was a room large enough for all of us from both rooms to sit. We listened to some historic speech on the radio. Maybe we were up there because there was better radio reception up on second floor. I don’t know what the speech was about or who was speaking. I only remember being worried the floor would cave in from the weight of all of us. I believed the teachers when they told us the floors were weak.


Sometimes, in the spring and fall when the weather was warm, we got to eat our lunch outdoors. I remember once sitting on that merry-go-round that you see in the picture. I always had a thermos bottle of milk. That day my black metal lunch pail and the thermos were on the seat beside me when someone started pushing the merry-go-round. Of course my thermos fell on the ground and broke. I broke lots of thermos bottles over the years in grade school.


The new school was built on the north side of the school grounds, close to the road. We were told it was the first school to have the flat roof design that all schools built after 1948 in Nebraska have. The building was completed after the 1948-49 school year had started and I was in the second grade. I was sick the day of the actual move. All the students emptied their desks into sacks and carried them to the new school where they were assigned new desks. These desks were movable with the seat and desk as one unit on a pipe-like base. The desk lid opened up to reach the contents inside. Now we could see where books were instead of just feeling for them.

 

Not having made the move like the other students did, it was quite an adjustment going to school one day in the old building and then coming back to school in the brand new building. All new furniture and so light with all those windows on the south!


The old building was torn down and that space became our baseball diamond.
 


ITHACA

 

ROBBINS


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