School was never my favorite place to be but I learned to accept it as a part of my daily routine. We enjoyed a completely new school starting with the second grade school year. The school was within walking distance from my home which made it rather convenient. My class consisted of seven girls and three boys, and the class ahead of mine was the opposite in that it was mostly boys. It was obvious from the start that what the girls wanted would almost always be "the way" in class decisions until graduation from high school.
The school was the center of the community and was governed by the local school board. The teachers were hired and fired without the complexities and teacher union influences we have today. The discipline in school was accepted and encouraged by the parents and penalties for misconduct were well known and respected. I know without any doubt that if any of us got in trouble in school that our parents would apply even more punishment when we got home. The definition of the word "respect" was ingrained in our minds for the rest of our lives, and we knew that they had good intentions, we just ventured outside the boundaries at times.
Every student in the school came from a family that depended on agriculture for their livelihood, and the success of all students was viewed as a community priority. We all had responsibilities at home to help our mothers and fathers in some way, and those chores, as they were called, were instruments in forming whom we were to become in adult life. We gathered around our dinner tables at night with our families and talked about all the happenings of the day, wether good or bad we were a family team that needed to work things out together. I knew at a very early age that this business called "agriculture" was a daily challenge and that there were many skills needed to produce food, provide for a family, and help your neighbors when they need it. The foundations of my career in agriculture were being built every day.
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