M's Story (as told to and written by Barbara Cordes)

It Was Hard to Get Good Ones!

Now I was seven years old and in first grade. School was always a challenge as it was hard to get good school teachers. One was Miss Templeton, and she carried bottles and bottles of "Kill A Germ." She would wash everything down with the stuff, even us kids. There were eight grades. The eighth graders never seemed to pass to the next grade, and the farmers wanted to keep them in school until they looked big and burley.

One day at recess, the eighth graders chased all of us 26 students into the woods. Miss Templeton ran out of the school calling to us, and ringing the old school bell. None of us kids wanted to come back to school because we were too afraid of what the eighth graders might do when they came out of hiding. Meanwhile, Miss Templeton returned to the school since she couldn't get us to come back. We knew we had to go back to the classroom, so finally we ran back and locked the door to keep the eighth graders out. Locking the door also kept Miss Templeton in. She panicked and opened a window. Just as she was putting one leg over the window ledge, a member of the school board drove by. He saw Miss Templeton's leg, but thought she was demonstrating to us how to get out of the building if we were in a fire. Miss Templeton never did report this incident since she was afraid of the school board members and never wanted to talk to them. Soon she left.

Our next teacher was Miss Korskey. She looked stern and drove a horse with a shiny buggy. She tried to make some sense out of our shenanigans, but we did things children shouldn't do…like putting chicken turds in her buggy. When she had a terrible day with us, she threw up her hands and sent a letter to our parents.

Eventually, those letters caught up with us. Feeling pretty good that I had been the first one home from school, and therefore, did not have to start the chores, my nature soon changed as I heard my mother's dictator voice. "You get in here, Missy, and set the table for 14."  "Fourteen?" I asked in a small voice, "Who's coming to dinner?"
"Miss Korskey," my mother announced. "Miss Korskey!?" I shouted.

Well, the table was set for 14-our 13 and the teacher. It seemed as if my dad would always look at us as if we had "something up our sleeves." I could never figure it out. We just liked to have a good time! We managed to get through dinner and dessert while on our best behavior. Mother and Father excused us kids and sent us outside.

You guessed it! We found some more chicken turds to put in Miss Korsky's buggy-nice fresh ones! About an hour later, Miss Korskey started to climb into her buggy. "OH, CARL (my father)!" she hollered, "the chickens have been in the buggy!" Dad started to shoo the chickens away. Miss Korskey got in her buggy. My brother, Lyle, was in the pump house and brought out a can of fly spray. Naturally, he planned to spray the waiting horse for flies, as a courteous gesture to Miss Korskey. However, as the horse lifted up her tail, Jack sprayed, and the horse took off like a rocket, nearly tipping Miss Korskey out of the gleaming buggy. "Whoa!" cried my dad. "What in the world spooked her?" Miss Korskey and her horse and buggy disappeared into the night.