Interview with Mr. George D. Bailey
October 23, 2002
Interviewed by Sandra M. Lowe
Mr. Bailey’s family farmed and he moved through several schools in the county. First was, Muddy Fork (Cross), Christian Home, and finally Ebenezer School. One of the companies he working for was Kirk Lumber Company, which donated the Christian Home building to become the Schoolhouse Museum.
Mr. George Bailey who grew up in Isle of Wight is a former student of Christian Home.
Q: Can you first tell me what area you grew up in, George?
A: I grew up in the Longview area.
Q: How many brothers and sisters do you have?
A: I have 3 sisters and 1 brother.
Q: Did any of them attend Christian Home?
A: Yes, my brother and my sister.
Q: And their names were?
A: Sarah Bailey, Virginia Bailey, Will Bailey, the baby sist Q: Did you tell us what schools you attended from the beginning through the Isle of Wight Training School?
A: The first school I attended was in Salisbury, Maryland. We left there and came here to Virginia, where I went to school called Muddy Cross for one year, then to Christian Home for a couple of years. When that school closed, then I went to Ebenezer School. We had to walk four and half miles each way to and from school, making it nine miles to walk daily.
Q: That can be difficult...
A: Yes.
Q: When you walked to school, do you remember any of the schoolmates that would walk with you, or things that happened to you during that time?
A: Yes, I can remember the first group of children that we met with to go to school together, they were: Ernestine Grandison and Della-May Grandison. Then down further the road we met with the Pitman's children, Paul, Hillary and Shirley Pitman. Then further down the road were the Ward's children, Shirley and Clementine and I can’t think of the other three Wards. The Brown boys, Booker T, and his brothers, were further down the road. Next was the Blowes, Wilma and Tim. Then we’d be at school. When we got to school, sometimes we’d have to start the fire and get the fire going and in the afternoon the teacher would let us out to get the starting-wood (kindling wood) to start the fire the next morning. We left the key like under the doorstep so the first one to get there would be the one who started the fire.
Q: What were some of the things that you may have done, on your to way to school? Did you have any experiences walking to school?
A: Sometimes we were just playing up and down the road. Sometimes we might have a little fight, but it didn't last long; before we got to school we were friends again.
Q: Ha! I’ve heard that before. When you went to school, what grades were taught? What grades did Christian Home have at that time?
A: From the 1st to the 7th grade.
Q: How many classrooms were in the building at that time?
A: There were was 2 classrooms, but when I was going there wasn’t but classroom and one teacher teaching those seven grades and her name was Mrs. Brown. I can't think of her first name; she was from Suffolk, and I really don't even know who she stayed with.
Q: At the time you went there, and all of the children were in one classroom, what wasthe other room being used for?
A: It was just vacant.
Q: Do you recall any other teacher that you had there besides Miss Brown? A: There wasn't but one teacher when I was there, when I went. Now there could have been other teachers before I got there, maybe that is why they had 2 classrooms.Q: And you said that would have been about what year?
A: Around 1946 or 1947.
Q: Were there any other chores that you have to do before school besides the wood?
A: Yes, we had to feed the animals, get the corn for the chickens, milk the cows, get the wood and make sure that we have com for my grandmother to feed the chickens. We had to walk about '/4 of a mile to the barn down the road to get the corn for her to feed the chickens. Then in the afternoon, we had to start the fire and make sure we have enough wood to run the fire through the night and the next day and make sure we fed the animals and stuff.
Q: That was at home?
A: Yes, that was at home.
Q: You pretty much started working as soon as you got back home from school to get your other chores done?
A. Yes, I had some chores to do soon as I get home. Then the following year when we were harvesting crops, we were out of school until after the crops were harvested ‘cause my father - stepfather - was a sharecropper and he uh didn’t know anything about tractors, so we plowed with mules.
Q: Once you got the chores done at school, how did the school day start?
A. We’d start off with a devotional service. Someone would recite a poem and sometimes we say a prayer, a Bible verse and a song. This is how class started each morning with devotionsQ: Do you remember the subjects that you had in school, or anything about your class work?
A: We had math, geography, history and some science. They taught us a little bit of science but it wasn’t very much like it is now. They taught us something about how we could take air out of a bottle and blow up a balloon. How you take one bottle and blow up a balloon, then you dried the air out and then we had spelling.
Q: How did you do spelling class? Do you recall if you had games or what?
A: The spelling class, the teacher would write the words on the board and you had a spelling book with the words in it. She’d go over the words so you know what the words were. Sometimes she would erase the word and go to the other class. When she came back, she would then call out the word for someone to spell it to see if you got it.
Q: Do you recall anything else about any of the classes that you had or about the subjects that you dealt with?
A: She gave us homework in geography or history and we had to bring it back the next day for her to grade you on. Most of the spelling, you would pass the paper over to the next person, she would call the word and spell it and he (the next person) was suppose to check your paper.
Q: You said that going to the school, about what time did the classes start and end?
A: About 9 o'clock to aboutQ: How many breaks did you have?
A: We had one in the morning around 10:30, then we have a lunch break and a break in the afternoon, I can't recall the time. Altogether we had three breaks.
Q: What can you tell us about lunchtime?
A: At lunchtime we gather in different groups. We would get around and play different games. Sometimes the girls would play against the boys in baseball and some would jump rope and sometimes the girls would be out there shooting marbles.
Q: Recess was pretty much the same?
A. Yes, it's pretty much the same every day.
Q: How about getting to the classroom again? What did it look like?
A: It was a tall building, with a coal heater in it with a chimney pipe running down the center of the floor that was wired to the wall. We got the heat from the pipe that helped heat the building,
Q: What else is in there?
A: You start off with small pieces of wood kindling and then you put coal in to it, and then the next morning whoever gets there first will have to take out the ashes and start the fire. Most of the boys will get the stuff in and the teacher would assign a different group to get the stuff in while she was in the next class. The other class would be asked to get the stuff in for the next day.
Q: Did some of the older students help some of the younger students, too, or they just go ahead with their jobs?
A: When she was working with the other students, we had study period. You were supposed to be studying your lessons. It's a study period then. You were supposed to be studying your next subject while she was teaching the other class.
Q: Does that work pretty well?
A: Yes, it worked pretty well.
Q: Did you have much trouble with discipline or were students misbehaving?
A: No, not too much, you’d have it every now and then somebody will get disoriented, but they knew the teacher had a choice of beating student then. She would write a note and give you for your parents, so, when you get home you would get beaten by your parent, but as for me, my grandmother couldn't read or write so I could just tell her anything was in the note and she wouldn’t know the difference, but sometimes she’d get a neighbor or something, ha, ha.
Q: Did this happen on many occasions?
A: Only one or two times, I could just tell her what I wanted her to know.
Q: What did you do about water, was there a water supply there at that time?
A: Yes it was a old pump, and at Ebenezer we went to the spring across the road and down in the woods and got water.
Q: How long did you say you went to school in Salisbury?
A: One year.
Q: And Christian Home?
A: Two years. And I went to Bridger part of a year. It wasn’t a whole semester.
Q: Did you have anything in the room, besides the teacher's desk, the student desks and a chalkboard and the heater, was there anything else in there?
A: No I can't recall, but we had a closet where we hang our coats up in there. When we were in school we just carried peanut butter and jelly and biscuits for lunch, nothing greasy in those bags.
Q: Can you think of any other school supplies that were there, anything the teacher had to help her do her job?
A: I’m trying to think if she had a little library that she took books from. I can't recall. Most of the time we had used books, we didn't have new books, sometimes some pages would be torn out.
Q: Were the books kept there from year to year and then handed out?
A: No, the teacher or somebody might get them from the school board and have them there, then you buy them from there.
Q: So you paid for them and you kept them?
A: Yes, but we would pass them over to the next person or sell them to the next person if they were in good shape, to the students that you know, but if you didn’t know a person that you could sell them to, you could sell them to the school.
Q: The ones you bought from the school board were they in a pretty good condition, too, or did they have missing pages, too, when you bought them?
A: Yes, sometimes they had missing pages.
Q: Do you have anything that you can add about discipline or punishment that went on at that time?
A: If you had done wrong, the teacher could send somebody to get a whip and tag you that a way. Mostly the teacher didn't take a whip, but some teacher will take a ruler beat you on the back of your hand that way. Most of them in Virginia would send somebody to get the whip and say, “Don’t come in here with no teeny switch or I’ll put it on you.”
Q: So they had a solution to anything you can come up with?
A: Right.
Q: Can you think of any other school experiences that we haven' talked about?
A: The guys had a thing going on when the new student first come in we will make a ring and push him into the middle of the ring to see how strong he is. If he can get by, either he was strong enough to get by or he’d give up. They had me to test the guy to see how good he was to fight. They’d say, “If you can get by Bailey… You’re alright.” We did that before teacher got there.
Q: Any childhood memory that you might recall that may not have been part of you days at Christian home?
A: No more than just we plowed with the mules or got in the cart sometimes. We had bike races, and in the summer time we work (chopped) in the field. You didn’t ever collect your money; your parents collected the money. If you worked Saturday, you collected that. If you didn't work for five days now, you won't get no money, if you worked 5 and one half days, you collected one half days pay or if you hustled, and cut grass for some white folks.
Q: That was mostly during the summer and up until the all the crops were in and after that you went to school?
A: Yes, that is why I got so far behind because I couldn't catch up when I got back to school.
Q: School would have started already?
A: Yes.
Q: After your school days when you finished from Isle of Wight Training School, what jobs did you have and other experiences did you recall from those days?
A: I still was working on the farm I was working with tractors then because I learned how to drive tractors, when I was with my grandparents. They didn’t know how to drive the tractor, so I learned how to drive the tractor. He was a sharecropper so he had to do it with the mules and team. So when I got bigger and I got to the farm on my own, I knew how to drive a tractor.
Q: Did you spend most of your time farming after you were done with school?
A: After farming I started working at Kirk Lumber Company, then from there to Gills
Steel plant, and from Gills Steel plant to Planter’s. That is where I retired from.
Q: When you worked for Kirk Lumber, was the building where it is now?
A: Yes, but I worked in the wood cutting logs, that’s what my job was, cutting up logs at certain length 6 ft., 12 ft. whatever the tree would measure out to be, and then pick it up and load it on the truck.
Q: Well, anything else you like to add to your interview?
A: No. I can't think of anything.
Q: Well, it's been a pleasure and I thank you for all the information you've been able to add and if you think of anything else then, let me know I will bring my machine back and we will continue.
A: Well, if there is anything else, I will give you a ring.