Interview with Mr. Isiah Haskins
April 2, 2003
Interviewed by Neavy Graves
Mr. Haskins attended the fist through seventh grades at McClelland School located in the Sycamore Cross area of the county.
My name is Neavy Graves and I’m doing an interview with Mr. Isiah Haskins.
Q. Mr. Haskins, can you give us the name of the school that you attended and location.
A. The school that I attended was called McClelland and it was located in the area that you call Sycamore Cross, place up there called Sycamore Cross, up in that area.
Q. Is that the same area that you grew up in?
A. Yes.
Q. How many brothers and sisters do you have?
A. I have four brothers and four sisters.
Q. Did they attend the same school?
A. No, I think, I believe, two of my sisters went there and they had a bus to come there and pick them up and bring them to Smithfield. Back in my time, there wasn’t a bus coming up there.
Q. Did they attend any other schools?
A. They attended Isle of Wight Training School and then from there they went to college.
Q. What grades were taught at McClelland?
A. From first to seventh.
Q. How many classrooms did they have?
A. One.
Q. What was the name of your teacher?
A. Well, my first teacher was named Miss Booth and my last one was Miss Chapman.
Q. What grades did you attend there?
A. Seven grades, first through the seventh.
Q. Do you remember what years?
A. I believe it was 1935 until 1942.
Q. Do you have any history about your school? When did it open, when did it close?
A. No, I don’t know when it opened, nor do I know when it closed. It closed, maybe about five or six years after I quit. Then they started sending my other brothers and sisters to, I believe it was Trinity. They came here to Smithfield.
Q. Is the school still standing?
A. No, it’s been gone.
Q. How did you get to and from school?
A. Walked.
Q. How far was it?
A. It was about 3 miles.
Q. So, going and coming you walked six miles each day?
A. That’s right, it might have been a little bit more, but I know it was at least three miles.
Q. Did you have any chores to do before school and after school?
A. After school I did. I had to get wood for the stove and the heater. In the morning, I really didn’t really have time but in the evenings and afternoons I did.
Q. Did you have any chores to do at school?
A. Yes, we had to gather wood to start a fire with. That was after I got up to the size to do it.
Q. How was your school heated?
A. Coal.
Q. How did your school day start?
A. Well, we started with the Pledge of Allegiance and we used to have a Bible verse we would say at school and then we sang a song.
Q. How long was your school day?
A. I can’t really tell. I think we got started at 9:00 and ended about 3:00. Something like that.
Q. How long was your school year? What month did it begin, what month did it end?
A. I believe that it began in September, August or September and we’d come out in about June, the middle of June, I think.
Q. What subjects did you have in school?
A. We had Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Geography and History and Spelling.
Q. Did you have any recess.
A. Oh yes, we had recess, lunch.
Q. How long was your lunch period?
A. Let me see, I believe it was an hour, but I’m not sure. I don’t remember that.
Q. What did you do during recess and after your lunch period?
A. After our lunch period, we usually played games. In between we had a rag ball that we used to play with. And we used to play ball and different things. And we had a croquet set and we used to play croquet. Yes, we used to have games right after lunch
Q. What did your classroom look like?
A. It was like one, big, open room.
Q. Did you have any blackboards?
A. Yes, we had blackboards.
Q. Did you have anything else on the walls?
A. No, I can’t remember anything else on the walls, but I remember we had a sand table. We had a sand table in there and we used to take turns pushing stuff in it like we were a sand mover.
Q. What subjects did you cover during the day?
A. We covered all of those I just said. We covered them all in one day.
Q. Did you have any specific textbooks that you enjoyed?
A. Well, I used to love to read and that was one of them that I really liked. Yes, that was the one I enjoyed more than anything.
Q. Can you remember some of the characters in your Reader?
A. Let me see…
Q. Did you have Dick, Jane, Spot?
A. Yes, I remember Dick and Jane. See Jane run and, yes, I remember Spot.
Q. How was your school heated in the winter?
A. Coal.
Q. Who made the fire?
A. Usually it was the teacher. They’d get there in the morning and make the fire and then all of us would get there.
Q. Where were your seats like?
A. It was a bench like and everybody had a seat and it had a desk and then it had like a shelf under the desk where you’d put your books and stuff under there.
Q. Where were your restrooms?
A. Outside
Q. What type of water supply did you have?
A. We had a pump and we had a cooler. We used to pump water in the cooler and then bring it inside and then we drank from that during the day.
Q. Did you have any extra school supplies that you used, like crayons?
A. Oh, I think we had to take our own things and they did have chalk for the blackboard.
Q. Did you furnish all of your supplies?
A. Yes, I think we had our books and everything.
Q. So you had to purchase your own books?
A. Yes
Q. What was the lighting like in your school?
A. I believe it was, you know how they used to have those lamps you would put on walls? It was lamps like that…that’s what the lighting was like.
Q. During the daytime, did you use natural light?
A. Right, the whole front of the school was windows.
Q. Did the windows have shades on them?
A. Yes, I believe they did.
Q. Did you have anywhere to hang your coats in the winter time?
A. We had like a little locker area to put our coats in. As you walked in the school there was a little coat area or something like that.
Q. Did they have hooks on the wall or nails?
A. I believe they had some hooks, I believe that, I can’t say for sure, but I believe they had some hooks on the wall.
Q. Describe what type of discipline or punishment was used.
A. Well one of the punishments they used was the teacher she had a ruler and she would hit you on our hands, she would walk up behind you and tap you from behind. But, there really was not that much. Back in those days the children, they weren’t too bad.
Q. Can you describe your teacher’s desk?
A. Yes, my teacher had a desk that was made a little bit larger than _______________________
Q. Did the teacher start with the lower classes or the higher classes?
A. She started with the lower classes and worked up to the higher classes.
Q. What did a class do while another class was being taught?
A. We were supposed to be reviewing our own lessons at that time until she got ready for us so we’d be ready for her
Q. Is there any additional school experiences that you would like to tell us about?
A. I know many a day I was the only boy in class. They told me I was the first one that graduated from that school. And after that I said I don’t believe it and the teacher told me I graduated from the seventh grade and she said “you were the first one that graduated from this school”.
Q. You don’t have any idea when the school was built?
A. No I don’t. I don’t have any idea. I know it was there when I went there in 1935, I believe and it was there then. It was there before but I don’t know how long.
Q. Are there any other childhood memories you can recall about growing up?
A. Well, I know when I was there, we didn’t have no vacation like the children do now when they come home from school. They have vacation but we didn’t. Every day after school I would work on the farm and work until I went back to school. Chopping peanuts, replant peanuts and stuff like that I could do. And I did all that til it was time to go back to school.
Q. After attending school, what jobs, changes or any other experience do you recall in the county?
A. Well, I didn’t anymore jobs other than working on the farm. I worked on the farm from the time I got out of school until I was grown, that’s when I left the farm. That was 1955.
Q. Which service were you in, which branch?
A. Army.
Q. How long did you stay?
A. Two years.
Q. During those two years, did you go overseas?
A. No, I stayed in the States.
Q. What area of the country?
A. Down in Georgia, South Carolina and Georgia.
Q. How has the county changed since your school days?
A. Well, it’s changed a lot because I had to walk all the way to Smithfield. Smithfield was the closest school to where we were and that was about 10, 12 – 15 miles and I would have had to walk. After my sister, she was three years younger than I, and when she graduated from the school out there, they put a bus out there and they take them then on into Smithfield. So she didn’t have to walk. She went on from McClelland to the Smithfield Training School.
Q. Can you give us a short biographical sketch of your life. The highlights of your life.
A. Well, the highlights are that I just had to work. That’s most of what I did after I got out of school, that’s what I did, I went to work. I worked for 25 cents a day. I worked 5 ½ days a week for $1.37 a week. That’s what I was making. You worked from Monday morning til…there wasn’t no eight-hour job here. It was you worked from the time you can see to the time you can’t see. Part of my highlight was that there weren’t anymore schools to go to, so I just continued to work until I retired.
Q. Do you have children?
A. Yes, I have four.
Q. Is there anything else, Mr. Haskins, that you would like to tell us about?
A. Well the only thing that I could say is that I was the only boy there and I didn’t like to go because there weren’t any more boys there and my mother used to have to make me go. She used to have to make me go because I’d get out there and I’d start wandering down the road and I didn’t want to go, but my mother made me, so I had to go anyway. And, there were a few other boys but they were working but I was kind of small and there wasn’t anything I could do. I went the whole time, I went the full seven years and I got to the place where I graduated from the seventh grade and couldn’t go any further because I couldn’t walk to Smithfield. I had to stop right there.
Q. What advice would you give to school children today?
A. Go to school, go to school and get something in your head because I thank God for the little that I did get. I don’t know how I got through but for God. If they don’t get an education now, they don’t get a job. I tried to help all of mine. See, my son, he didn’t go to high school. I told him I’d help him if he wanted to go but he told me that he wanted to go in the service and come back after he got his G.I. Bill and come back and go to college. But he never did that. He put in 20 years.
I always say, stay in school because I got what I could, but I couldn’t get the education that they can get now. They can go all the way if they want to, but I couldn’t. But, I made it with what I did have and I had a good paying job all because the Lord knew that I got what I could.
Q. Is there anything else?
A. I can’t think of anything else to tell you.
OK, we appreciate this interview with you for the Schoolhouse Museum and we hope that one day, your grandkids and your great grandkids can go to the museum and listen to you tell your story. Thank you very much.