Dolan School

This is another story my Grandma emailed me a few years back.  Then I found this video on her computer.  The video is having difficulties loading so it may or may not appear on this blog.  Either way, now you can her my Grandma tell her story in her own words.

            My formal education started when I was 5 years old.  I remember sitting on my mothers lap.  I even remember where she was sitting - at the kitchen table.  She told me that I needed to start school this fall since Marr and Woodrow were still going to school and I could get started in school going with them.  She was concerned that they would not be going the next year when I would be 6 years old.   She was right.  They did not return the next year.  I rode a horse to school through Grade 6.  The school was 2 miles north of our ranch and I would ride to school on stormy days when I could not see where I was going, but my horse knew where we were going and knew the way, and I knew that he knew the way!  I remember of going to school when the storm was bad enough that my mother would put a scarf over my face up to my eyes and another scarf on my head down to my eyes.  Schools are closed now, when weather gets that bad.  I don’t remember of missing much school because of bad weather.  Only when the temperature got to a dangerous low I would be able to stay home from school.  We did not have cuffs inside of our coat sleeves like they do now.  Many times when we would get to school we would have frozen spots on the under side of our arms where the wind would blow the cold air up the sleeve of our coat.  The teacher would say – “Go get some snow and rub it on the spot so that it thaws slowly and it will not be so painful”.  We carried our lunches in a Rogers Golden Syrup bucket with a bale (the metal handle on the bucket)

            I was the only student in my grade, so I liked to tell people I was the smartest kid in my grade, but likewise I was the worst.   Morgan Berry was a grade ahead of me and I did a lot of his work along with him.  When I finished Grade 6 and they were going to close the Dolan School because we did not have the required 6 students to keep it operating, my teacher told my mother that I could go into Grade 8 when we moved into Cardston, since I had already done all of the Grade 7 work with Morgan, but my mother

would not let me  do it, since I was already a year younger than many of the Grade 7 students.