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Voices from Beaver Hill
Beaver Hill Coal Mine and Company Town
1893-1923
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copyright c 2006 by Marilee Miller. This is a work in progress, a rough draft.
PART 2
Family & Community Life
2 - 2 THE SCHOOL KIDS
SPEAK UP
John Menegat, student at Beaver Hill
I was surprised to find such a nice school out there in the
woods. I guess the company at Beaver Hill thought enough of
their town to put up a real good school for the kids. [Menegat pg]
By modern standards, the new school built in 1915 still wasn’t very large. But the building impressed the children who had mostly experienced one room country schools, often no more than thin shells of weathered, never-painted boards.
Tom Kingsley, student at Beaver Hill
We lived in the center of town. The school house was maybe
a block away from us, on the flat hear the top of the hill. From our
back door we had a good view of the school. I remember most
the white spire [bell tower] on the roof.
It’s peculiar. I know I attended school at Beaver Hill [for a
short time]. For some reason I can no longer recall ever having
been inside that building. I was trying to think what the desks
would have looked like. They must have been traditional – and
like the ones we used in Scotland – otherwise, I would have
noticed them more. [Kingsley 11, 13]
Alex McKelvie, student at Beaver Hill
I know that I used to run home at noon for lunch. Most of the
kids did – for the furthest away would only be a half mile [or less].
I don’t remember any of the kids bringing a sack lunch with them
in the mornings. [McKelvie 16]
Hugh Brown, student at Beaver Hill.
You also had a 15 minute recess. Then when the bell rang you
dropped everything and got in there. Right then.
From the school, I could almost jump into our [Brown’s] back
yard. In the morning after the school bell rang, you had a few
minutes to get to school. Of course, we were always up in the
schoolyard [playing] anyway, before the bell.
I’m not talking about any little hand bell. I mean a great big bell
up in the tower. You could hear it ring all over town. And you
didn’t get late for school – not with them teachers! [Brown 11]
In 1920, coal miner Albert Menegat found work at Beaver Hill. At first not finding housing suitable for his family, he left them behind to finish out the school year in a community a number of miles away. His son John Menegat still recalls the tribulations of being an Italian kid in tiny Lakeside, Oregon. No English was spoken in his home.
If you didn’t have a good command of the English words,
why, the kids would call you some dumb thing or another. And
the first thing you know, there was a fist fight. It didn’t take very
much to get me started! [Menegat 2-3, 10]
At Lakeside, nationality tended to set apart folks like the Menegats. On the other hand, at Beaver Hill there were many cultures. In 1921, when young John Menegat attended 2nd Grade at Beaver Hill, he found all children seemed to be accepted.
Tommy Kingsley was a first grader that autumn term of 1921. Tolerance extended to what people wore. Because of the Oregon mud and the livestock droppings, most school children didn’t bother to shine their shoes. But Mrs. Kingsley kept up the good Scottish tradition of shining their brogues every night before the family went to bed. Why, in Mary Kingsley’s eyes, her children might as well go to school undressed as to show up in shabby footwear! (The shoe shining habit was set for Kingsley’s full lifetime.)
Mrs. Kingsley sent off her son each morning in knee socks and shorts, probably cut down from old ones worn by Tom Kingsley, the boy’s father. The other boys wore overalls -- but didn’t criticize his apparel.
(When he reached the 7th Grade – by this time in a different school district -- Mrs. Kingsley presented her son with a birthday gift of long pants. Next day, a student at that place sized him up. “Well, my God – it’s about time.” ) Actually, Kingsley felt like long pants encumbered him.
Sister Emily adds: “Well, you had such short legs. The pants always had to be shortened; they were too big all over. They were so much trouble to fit!”
At this point, Tommy inserts a “boy’s” logic. “With shorts, you could wear them big to start with, and from then on until they were actually outgrown.” [Kingsley-Winsor 7]
However, the Kingsley children did get laughed for their way of speaking, making them wish they weren’t so fresh from the “auld country.” At Beaver Hill in 1921, their new acquaintances didn’t even understand them. That was so peculiar!
Tommy Kingsley, student at Beaver Hill
I remember in school, [Emily] and I must have had a little
different pronunciation. Like cooshion for cushion, and
ootside. Or snib the door, for lock the door.
Oh, I remember…everybody would laugh, and I didn’t realize
they were laughing, not at me, but because they liked to listen to
the brogue. I know I struggled to get rid of that. I wasn’t going to
call a book a boook.
Years later – I was what, 20? – the [former storekeeper at
Beaver Hill] used to kid me about the first time I came in to his
store… I think mother sent me down to the store for something,
including a loaf of bread. As I recall it, or as he [Mr. Foster] tells
it – he may have added a lot to it, I don’t know.
It [the bread] came in twin loaves. And I said, “But I don’t
want twin loaves.” He said, “What do you want?”
I looked at him and I said, “Well, I want haughf a loaf”,
[pronouncing half in the British way]. He finally talked me in to
taking the twin loaves. [Kingsley experiences much enjoyment in
recounting this story.]
And so the Kingsley children diligently practiced the Americanized forms. However, to this day Emily Kingsley (Winsor) has held on to an almost-unaware compromise of the new and the old. When she is deeply moved – such as when reminiscing about her beloved father – she’s apt to say with feeling, “Ach! I remember--- “
Tommy Kingsley has only a few records and the family’s say-so to sort out a year and a half he spent in the first grade. In Blackstone, Scotland, he went clear through the first grade. Perhaps unable to reconcile his Scottish education with American requirements, his teacher at Beaver Hill placed him in the first grade again. A short time later, his father died in a mine explosion. The family moved to Marshfield for some months. Later, they settled down at Catching Inlet.
There – still in the first grade, but in the fourth location and on the second continent – Kingsley’s literal memory of the inside of a school room finally catches up with him, something to remember even in his elder years.
After he finally got squared away, he went through the rest of the first and second grade work in about three months, being promoted to the 3rd grade before the end of the 1921-22 school year. “I had been considered smart before that. But then that was too far advanced, so I was kind of ordinary from then on. But when I graduated from high school I was barely sixteen."
His educational musical chairs did Kingsley no harm. Certain parts of learning always came easily. Emily Kingsley Winsor recalls a time shortly after they moved to Catching Inlet (when her brother was still classed as a first grader.) The school had a program. And Tommy recited “Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the mist----“ The whole thing. What an impression this made on his sister! [Lochinvar, from Marmion, by Walter Scott] [Winsor-Kingsley 6]
Kingsley brushes off memorization as “no big deal”. Before leaving Scotland, he knew the names of all the States in the U.S.A., and their capitals. But sister Emily had a harder time with memory work. When the children arrived at Beaver Hill, the teacher questioned them about their study level.
Emily:Kingsley *Winsor), student at Beaver Hill
One of the teachers asked me if I knew the 6-times tables. I
said yes. And so she said: "Then what’s 7 times 6?" "Oh!" I
said, "I haven’t had the 7’s yet!"
Little brother nudged me and said: "It’s the same as 6 times 7."
And I was in the 3rd Grade, and he was only in the First. I was
such a big, husky girl – people always thought I was older than I
really was.
Kingsley bounces back with a retort. “Well, you were probably the tallest one in your class. I certainly was the shortest one in mine.” [From their indulgent looks, it’s obvious brother and sister love each other very much.]
Hugh Brown has strong memories of one teacher.
I remember one woman – a real old-fashioned school teacher.
She always wore long blouses and those – what do you call
them? Sleeve protectors? They were stiff, maybe celluloid. They
went from the cuff well up her arms.
Boy, she was strict! If you were late to school, or if you
weren’t doing your work, she’d come along and slap you on the
back of your hand with her big old long ruler. [Brown slams a
countertop with an open palm.] Whap! Real hard.
Hugh Brown admits his classes were often pretty hard for him. But since attendance was required, there was no point in complaining. In fact, he even thinks he enjoyed school.
Students who shared about the last years of the community, mostly seemed to like their teachers. The names most frequently mentioned were Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Rayer, and Mr. Lyle Chappell and sweet, young Fern DeLong, who was to become Chappell’s fiancee, and later, bride.
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xxx Arnot.doc
[Mary Arnot and Hulda Tobin, in a taped interview. Where voices are indistinguishable on tape, the author of this book has given a joint-title.]
Lyman[interviewer] (to Arnot): ..When did you go there? What are your…early memories…?
Arnot: We went to Beaver Hill in about 1914 or ‘15. …We were there…about two years… Our dad was a coal miner, and worked in a mine there, which was operating at full capacity at that time. And…also the Conlogue Lumber Company was logging the Beaver Hill valley, in through there…
[Arnot-Tobin]: We [started] in the First and Second grades, or something like that…
[Lyman]: You went five days a week, morning or afternoon…?
[Arnot-Tobin]: All day… The same as [other] schools… At the time… they had two teachers. Miss Leggett [sp?], who was a maiden lady, let’s say. She had the early grades. And a Miss Jones, who had the… [older].
[Arnot-Tobin]: …Those teachers in those days – you learned your ABC’s! Very thoroughly. And your numbers. And you learned color. I remember particularly a little incident where my cousin, and she [teacher] would tell you, “Now put a red bead on your chain.” Or “put a blue bead.” So you learned what they were. And you counted them as you went.
Lyman: So you sort of learned colors, a little bit about art, and a little bit about…arithmetic at the same time.
[Arnot-Tobin]: Right. And she, very unfortunately, in being so intense on what she was doing, sewed the beads to her dress. [laughter] So Miss Leggett used a ruler on her hands for not paying attention.
[Arnot-Tobin]: We…had to take…singing up there.. , and the same as in other schools. And I do remember – there was a Japanese…woman, she must have been 18 or 20, she had a beautiful voice. And could play the piano. And I tell you, you could just sit for hours and listen to her.
Alex McKelvie tells about his 4th or 5th Grade.
We heard we were going to get a man teacher. I was scared
to death. I thought – oh, boy! – he’ll probably be the devil. Not
that I was a troublemaker, I’d just never had a man teacher
before.
Mr. Chappell turned out to be one of the nicest teachers I ever
had. As a matter or fact, he also turned out to be the only man
during my whole school days. [McKelvie 8]
Alex McKelvie used to enjoy playing with his classmates Hugh Brown and Martin Bowmar. But Brown’s father died of black lung disease, and Bowmar’s was killed in a mine accident. After his friends’ families left town, McKelvie felt isolated in school. Although he had 4 sisters and one brother, none were close to his age. The other Beaver Hill kids on his level, he complains, kept moving away.
In the 6th grade, I think one girl was in with me… First thing I
knew, I was the only one there. I went through the 7th and 8th
grades all alone. Oh, there were a lot of younger kids. There
might have been four or five or six in each lower grade.
[McKelvie 11, 9]
“Reading, writing, grammar. Nothing fancy,” one teacher explains. “You taught them to read and write and count. That’s the main project.” [Fern DeLong Chappell]
Like most country schools of that time, the school taught students through the 8th Grade. Anyone wishing advanced studies, went to High School or an Academy in a larger town.
There were no frills in the Beaver Hill education. But graduating from the 8th Grade meant passing the difficult Examinations put out by the County School Superintendent’s office.
The lone 8th grader in Miss DeLong’s class, a girl, received extra attention. Previously, Mrs. Rayer tried to give Alex McKelvie the same intense study. McKelvie’s family moved to North Bend late in the school year. However, Mrs. Rayer invited the boy to come back to Beaver Hill to take his exams in his familiar setting. He stayed overnight with the teacher -- for it was a two day test.
In a mining camp such as Beaver Hill, what were the prevailing attitudes toward education? Some parents wanted their children to excel, so they could have a better lifestyle, not have to work in a mine, like their fathers did. But others expected their kids to go to work right after the Eighth Grade.
Alex McKelvie.
That’s what I did…. I never looked forward to going [farther
in] school. I was taught that as soon as you get through the Eighth
Grade you put on your cork shoes and go to work.” [McKelvie 15]
Whatever happened to the children after their school days, one can certainly say the pupils didn’t find school at Beaver Hill dull. In those days, it seems that Johnny did learn to read – and apparently liked it that way!
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YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO COPY THIS electronically or manually. Please copy only the link to the URL.
Beaver Hill home-- http://history.wordforlife.com/BeaverHill&/BHindex.html
This page -- http://history.wordforlife.com/BeaverHill&/schoolkids.html
copyright c 2006 by Marilee Miller. This is a work in progress, a rough draft.
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