I never think of Greeneville Consolidated without thinking of snow. Snow is beautiful at times, but it can become a natural enemy. (I have
heard it said that snow is nice if you don’t have to move it.) It caused much trouble and hardship in the Midwest during my teaching years. In January of my first year, with Arthur driving, we teachers attended Althea’s beautiful wedding in a city in Minnesota, and we slid into ditches twice and were pulled out by helpful farmers with teams of horses. On returning from the wedding we were stalled by drifts about a quarter of a mile from the teacherage and had to walk through deep snow the rest of the way.
Things were much worse during the second year. Snow storms started before Christmas, but the situation did not become really serious until in January. Then began record breaking snowfalls and temperature drops which continued for many days. Snow fell on snow until piles made along the roadways by the plows were so high that one had the feeling of being in a tunnel on the rare occasions when it was possible to drive a car. Blizzard followed blizzard and people suffering from exposure were known to have frozen their lungs. Temperatures as low as 30 degrees below zero were recorded.
Trying to hold school was at first a frustration and later an impossibility. At times only one bus would be able to make it to the school, and the decision would be made not to have school that day. Or, if all of the buses did arrive, school would often be dismissed early because of the threat of another road-closing snowfall. Day after day, radio commentators gave their dismal predictions—“No relief in sight.” As the situation worsened we were literally snowbound in the teacherage for many days, and we missed several weeks of school. After the storms were over we made up some of the lost school days on Saturdays, but six-day weeks caused a number of problems and the State Board of Education eventually decreed that not all of the missed days had to be made up. A problem for us at the teacherage was the freezing of water pipes between the house and the school, and we were forced to carry water from the schoolhouse and use the showers in the locker rooms in the school gymnasium. At times we were without power and had to rely on kerosene lamps.
At first the enforced vacations seemed like a lark. We found ways of having fun which included sliding down a slope behind the schoolhouse on a handle-less scoop shovel and playing Ping-Pong on the breakfast nook table or on the sewing table in the home economics laboratory. Since I had played Ping-Pong in college and the Sunderland boys from across the road hadn’t ever played it, I was able to be the winner for awhile, but Skip insisted we would play until he had won. This he achieved one night at midnight and I went down to defeat and was never able to be a winner after that. We even tried playing basketball in the school gym but we teachers didn’t provide any competition for the strong neighbor boys.
We were able to receive mail as the mailman, traveling on a little tractor, was able to drive over drifts and fences covered with snow. His arrival was an exciting event as we eagerly opened packages of food, games, or materials for sewing sent to us by concerned relatives. The neighbors went to town by bobsled for groceries, and on occasion we rode with them, bundled up in heavy coats and blankets.
Cheers went up if ever a snow plow came along our road, throwing spray reminiscent of the speedboats we had seen on Big Blue Lake. Attempts were made to keep main highways open, but it was not often that our less-traveled road was passable.
After the schoolhouse had sat in chilled silence for a period of three weeks, the school board declared a vacation. We were quick to pack our bags and with much excitement we phoned our relatives and Frances’s fiancé and made plans for escape. Gwen and Irene, whose homes were in the area, were able to get home by walking a half mile to a main highway where they were met by family members. Frances’s and my plans were a little more complicated. We hoped to get into Minnesota where the parents of her fiancé and my brother George and his family lived.
As always, our good neighbors across the road offered their help, and on a frigid afternoon Ron and Skip took us by bobsled to the Jansen home which was close to the Iowa/Minnesota state line. People in the community were well aware of our activities as receivers had clicked all along the line as Frances and I had made our plans by telephone. (“Rubbering” was the
accepted way of keeping up with neighborhood news.) George had been in touch with the highway department in Minnesota and had been assured that a snow plow was even then on its way to the state line and that the road would be open. Frances and I were to stay at the farm home until we saw the little yellow Whippet coming and then we would walk the short distance to the state line. We waved happily to the Sunderland boys as they left in their bobsled to return home.
To reach the warm kitchen we followed a path carved from snow piled higher than our heads. A boy in the family, one of Frances’s students, seemed uncomfortable with teachers in the house, so he grabbed a cap and jacket and departed for the barn, not to return during our stay there. However, Emily, one of my eighth-graders, seemed happy to have us there and she joined her mother in serving huge slabs of spice cake and coffee with thick cream.
When several hours went by, with no sign of a snow plow or a car, we became uneasy. Feeling a need to find a telephone, a convenience the Jansens did not have, Frances and I decided to walk to a farm house which sat at the end of a long lane about a quarter of a mile north of the state line. Still feeling excited and adventurous, we grasped our bags and started plodding through the snow. By changing hands often, we managed the suitcases but dropped them gladly on the farmhouse stoop. To our great relief the farm wife who opened the door told us that some man had been on the phone trying to get ahead of two school teachers. Unfortunately, however, she had told him that she had seen a sled leaving the house where we had been waiting, and she supposed that we had given up and gone home. Fortunately my brother was not easily defeated and we did reach him by telephone. People along the way were following our progress by phone so it was possible for us to get in touch with him.
However, our troubles were not over! Alas! The snow plow had made a cowardly retreat back to town at 5:00 PM when the work day ended, leaving some two miles of road still unplowed. But George was not giving up yet. His instructions to us were “You start walking north, and I’ll start walking south and we’ll get you out of there somehow!”
So Frances and I did indeed start walking north, this time carrying our suitcases between us on an old broom handle which had been unearthed from the cellar by one of the children in the farm home.
Snowsuits had not become popular at that time so we were wearing calf-length winter coats and galoshes and hose. That left an area exposed above our ankles, and snow soon collected in the tops of our boots. An occasional bared fence post showed where the road was supposed to be. We followed it as best we could. Sunset came and went and the evening star came out. In the darkness we could not see the drifts and hollows. The first time we went rolling in the snow in a heap of bags and broomstick we lay for a moment, giggling hysterically. But as we fell again and again, and the snow crept in around our necks, wrists, and ankles, our laughter became strained and finally gave way to silence or to un-teacherly exclamations! Sore shoulders, soaked mittens, numb toes, and aching lungs added to our misery. All that kept us from feeling completely apart from any kind of civilization was an occasional glimmer from a lantern or a kerosene lamp in a farmhouse window. We lost track of time and we felt as if the night and the snow would go on forever.
At long last we saw a dark form moving against the snow. Seeing George plunging toward us, we shouted with relief and tried to push on faster. George seemed like Galahad himself as he took the bags from our cramped hands and turned back to stagger with us through the mounds of snow we still had to battle.
Somehow we floundered on, until finally we stumbled into the car which the snowplow had forced into a drift at the side of the road. We slumped into the car seats in exhaustion, but after a brief rest and some warmth from the car heater we tackled the snowdrift. George did some shoveling and then, with Frances driving and George and me pushing, we inched the car back onto the road and turned it around. Then came the slow ride with long waits for oncoming cars, for much of the road was cleared for only one-way traffic. Finally, as we came over a hill, we saw the lights of a town with its promise of food and warmth. After a brief stop there we pushed on and we reached George’s home at around midnight. Frances was able to board a train the next day which took her to her destination at her fiance’s parents’ home.
We had been away from the teacherage for ten days when a call came summoning us back. The snow storms had stopped and some thawing had begun. The plows had bustled around the township roads, and the dormant school buses were ready for another attempt to have school.
This time Frances joined us at my brother’s home and we started out again in the little Whippet.. We were not anxious to return to what at times had seemed almost like a prison. But duty called us back, though not with undue haste, for, as we rounded a corner about a mile from the school, we came upon two cars hopelessly mired in mud. Once more Frances and I picked up our bags and started trudging along the roadway, this time walking in the ruts in order to avoid going into mud over our boot tops.