The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

Although many years have passed since my brother and I were grade school students in the one-room country school in Iowa we knew as Douglas # 8, he and I quite often talk about it.

One  topic always concerned how cold it was in that building in the winter. No insulation, of course. Uninsulated floor over an uninsulated crawl space. Lots of windows for light. (And cold.) To add to the misery, this was a time when illnesses were thought to be harbored by stale air. People slept all winter with windows open. So Miss Martin, old enough to believe germs liked old air, upon arriving each day would open doors and windows, let that disease-ridden air out. And the cold air in. It often was mid-morning before Douglas # 8 warmed up.

In the winter, we students would take turns going up front to sit by the large, porcelain-coated coal stove. Hold our feet up against it. Try and thaw them out a little, knowing they would freeze the minute we went back to our desk.

Miss Martin ran a pretty strict ship. No tomfoolery, or you’d be sat up front in the corner. It was the northwest corner, the coldest spot in the building. No place to be in the winter.

For young boys at that time, cap guns were the rage. In case you’re not familiar with them, cap pistols were pot metal play guns into which a roll of caps would be inserted. Each little individual paper “mound” or cap, had a tiny bit of black powder in it. As you pulled the trigger, caps would advance, be exploded,  and you’d get a small but very rewarding “bang.” And then a bit of smoke just to add to the wonder of it all.

Then we discovered that if, while you were up there warming your feet, you could throw one of those individual caps up onto the coal stove, it would go off with a kind of sizzle, throw off a bit of smoke. Nothing too remarkable. Except to us.

But the goal was to flick it up there just as you were leaving, so it would get blamed on the next person.

Oh I’ll tell you–life was good. Our young boy-winter-lives revolved around that stove and caps.

And matches. That was a period in a young boy’s life when farmer matches held magic. Boys reached an age of what? Maybe seven or eight? Matches and fire? Whoa! Magic, I tell you.

Both my brother and I got our fingers toasted a bit by dad, who caught us up to no good on the farm somewhere, having swiped some matches out of the holder over the cook stove. 

“Farmer” matches were, for those of you who may not know, wooden matches. Very rewarding to strike into flame, were you eight or nine or so.

My brother had smuggled a couple of farmer matches to school one day. If you needed to go to the outhouse, you raised your hand for permission. Only of course one at a time. (The girls had their own outhouse.)

My brother raised his hand, and as he told me later, headed on out. Peed down the wooden hole. Then, seeing some paper stuff down there, thought it would be fun to throw a match down there, see what happened.

As plans go, this one showed a typical eight-year-old’s remarkable lack of foresight. The paper burst into flames. Lots of fire. Smoke. Totally unexpected. Panic. Burning down the outhouse would be quite difficult to explain.

And  try as he might, there was nothing left in his tank with which to hose those flames.

He raced back into the school house, and on his way by my desk, whispered to me: “Quick! Raise your hand! Get out there!”

And took his seat, already under the intense scrutiny of Miss Martin.

Who ignored my raised hand while she completed some section of another grade’s instruction.

I finally made it out there. Wasn’t even any smoke. Not even enough to understand what was going on, until he told me at the noon hour.

Life at Douglas # 8 would have been much more memorable had the boy’s outhouse burned down, I bet.

Fun stuff, growing up was, back then.