I was born January 8, 1951. When it came time for me to start 1st grade the cut off date for turning 6 was December 31 so it appeared that I could not start in the same class as my cousin Wayne Helms who had a December 26 birthday. However my mother did not think the 12 days that separated us in age should keep us in different grades so she had me tested at the county office and they OK’ed me to start early. That meant I was always the youngest in my classes through out school.

I spent the first 5 years of my school career at Woolsey Elementary School. The school was built on land donated by Dr. I. G. Woolsey. Sadly the school is long gone now and the Fire Station at Woolsey stands where the school once stood. The little red brick school had 4 classrooms and one auditorium, however only 2 classrooms were used while I attended school there.

So with only 2 classrooms there were only 2 teachers as well. Mrs. Mary Kerlin taught first and second grades and Mrs. Grace McLucas taught third, fourth, and fifth grades. To accomplish teaching multiple grades in the same room, each row represented a different grade. Our teacher would stand in front of the row she was teaching while giving an assignment to the other rows. At promotion time it meant we would get to move over to the next row.

Of course there was no cooling system other than open windows. It was common to go bare footed in the warm months. During the cold months we had two big pot belly stoves that burned coal for heat. It was the duty of the older boys to bring in coal from the pile out back and to take out the ashes that accumulated.

My favorite time of year was Halloween. We would decorate the school and auditorium for a Halloween Carnival each year. It seemed the whole community would turn out with what seemed like numbers that added up into the hundreds. We would have all sort of prize contests and the high light would be the cakewalk in the auditorium. Everything seemed so large (at lease in my memory).

About 20 years ago Mrs. Bowlden organized a reunion for anyone that had ever attended Woolsey School. I was amazed at the large number of people that came. Also I was amazed at the large number of older generation folks that had gone to Woolsey School.

I went back to Woolsey School a few years before it burned down and was shocked at what I saw. As I went through the auditorium (which had been turned into Wendell Jones Cabinet Shop) everything seemed so much smaller than what I remembered. I couldn’t get over how different the building was compared to my childhood memories. One thing for certain though – nothing I saw took away from those many fond memories we made in the old 4 room school so many years ago.

David Griggs