Gas in the oneroom country School

Down the Hill and Across the Road

Gas in the one room school house.

All my life I have had a problem with gas, not the belching kind but out the other end. I ate the same things my brothers and sisters ate. Evidently my system processed food in a way that I developed gas. It made life somewhat difficult especially for a kid. When I felt it coming on I would find an appropriate place away from others to release it with little or no notice. However, that was not possible in every situation. Especially when sitting inside a one room school building.

 In the one room school building there was no running water, so, the toilets were outside about a hundred yards back of the school; one toilet for the boys and one toilet for the girls.  Mineral Point School where I attended did have electricity. The room was heated by a coal burning stove in the winter time. In the summertime we opened the windows to keep it somewhat cool.

The one room school was a building, where first through eighth grade was taught. One teacher taught all eight grades. That seems like it might be confusing. However, the teacher had a system where each grade was taught at a certain time of the school day. It actually was a good learning environment, if a student listened to what was being taught to each class they got a review of their past and would be exposed to what they would be taught in the future. In our school it had different size desks. The smaller desks were for the lower grades and the larger desks for the upper grades. The desks were arranged so each grade was seated together. All students were seated facing the front of the room. The teacher’s desk faced the students. Behind the teacher’s desk a blackboard extended the complete length of the wall. Above the blackboard the alphabet was printed in large letters both print and cursive.  To the right of the teacher’s desk was an upright piano. The total number of students in the school I attended ranged from sixteen to twenty.

Mineral Point School where I attended sat on a hill. The school building faced to the east. It sat on a high foundation which made the building 2 feet off the ground. On the south side of the foundation there was an opening about 18 inches square to allow one to enter. We called the opening in the foundation the door to the crawl space. Most of the time the opening was covered by a tight fitting wooden cover, which could be removed to get under the school house for what ever reason. Sometimes we would take the cover off and go under the school. It was really dark under there so we never went too far.

When I was in 7^th grade at Mineral Point School I had a bad gas attack. So severe that it caused me to break out in a sweat. The more I tried to hold it in the worse it got. I held my butt cheeks together as tight as I could. I could feel the sweat running down my back into my crack. I grabbed both sides of my desk seat and pressed myself down on the seat as tight as my strength would allow. It was getting worse. Fact is I was in pain. I realized I would not be able to make it till afternoon recess. I thought maybe I could lean over to one side and release it a little at a time quietly. As I leaned over to my right the gas started coming out in force. The first which was very loud was a sort of an underwater hissing sound, followed by a very high pitched screeching noise which became a rolling thunder like sound that one might hear during spring thunder storm followed by a very loud clap as though lightening had struck the well pump out in front of the school house.

The whole school went into panic mode. Everyone was terrified.

The teacher Beulah Atwell leaped from behind her desk with clinched fists held shoulder high facing the front door her upper lip curled and a snarling sound coming from way down in her throat ready to defend her students from any monster that might burst through the front door.

Marlene White jumped up and rushed to the blackboard and grabbed a piece chalk and begun writing her spelling words on the blackboard as fast as she could.

Mary Ann Hutchinson a Catholic girl who had just finished her Catechism two weeks before was looking straight up at the ceiling repeatedly crossing herself. Jack White slumped over his desk as if he had been shot. Charles Wallace bit the eraser off the end of his new EverSharp pencil. Jim Ash jumped up and let out several cuss words and threw his history book toward the blackboard. His book bounced off the blackboard and struck the keyboard on the piano. Tommy Younts wadded a big Chief tablet up into a ball that would fit in the palm of his hand….yeah the whole tablet.

 Freda Wallace stabbed herself in the leg with a freshly sharpened #2 lead pencil. The first graders were clutching their desk until their knuckles turned white too scared to cry with eyes as big as silver dollars. Bobby Joe Woods swallowed a red colored crayon he had been chewing on. Jeanie Hutchinson jumped from her desk and sit cross legged on the floor reciting verse four of psalm twenty-three with her hands over her eyes. James Ray Mulvaney stood up on the seat of his desk and put his hands on top of his head with tears running down his cheeks not making a sound. Braxton Gray my brother was sitting with his head down red faced trying to hold back the laughter. He looked like a pipe bomb ready to explode. I am sure my other brother Marlin and younger sisters were thinking ….yeah Jim had gas again. The rest of the students were sitting hands palm down on their desks wide eyed looking straight ahead like stone statues.

Then everything became deathly silent. It seemed that everyone held their position for several minutes. Then the teacher relaxed her position and said you boys have left that cover off of the crawl space and cats or something is fighting under the school house.

Yeah, that day there was gas at Mineral Point School!!

Jim Gray

Peculiar Missouri