Interview with Mr. Celestine Savage
March 22,2003
Interviewed by Sandra M. Lowe
Mrs. Savage went to Muddy Fork School (school records), although it was called Peahill and Muddy Cross for the road/area it was on. According to Mrs. Savage, classes went up to twelfth grade.
A: Mrs. Savage, could you tell us what area of Isle Wight you grew up in?
A: Right off Number Ten. Let me see if I can describe you where you go. It’s in Isle of Wight County, but it’s across Number Ten. It’s a crossing and you go to Longview but I’m still in Isle of Wight County. That is the area I grew up and where I went to school. And I still live in that area.
Q: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
A: There were 11 of us. I had three brothers and eight sisters.
Q: What schools did they attend?
A: All of us, as far as I know, went to the same school. Where we got our early education. Like I said, that my oldest sisters were, but my oldest sister of all, I can’t remember when she went to school. But by we living in the same area I was sure that we went to the same school ‘cause there was no other school in that area.
Q: What school was that?
A: It was called P-Hill school. And they also used the name of Muddy Cross, but that was the road that go there.
Q: But the school was P-Hill School?
A: Yeah, P-Hill School, that was the name that was printed over top of the door.
Q: What grades were taught there?
A: From one to twelve.
Q: How many rooms?
A: Two rooms.
Q: Two teachers?
A: Two teachers.
Q: When you were there, what grades did you go through?
A: I went through one to twelve.
Q: Can you tell us what years that would have been?
A: That’s gonna be the hard part. I can’t remember. I don’t think I can remember that.
Q: Do you have any idea? You started when you were six?
A: Yeah, right.
Q: What age are you now?
A: I’m 86. I was 86 February.
Q: Very good. Do you recall some of the names of some of your teachers?
A: Well, to tell the truth, I only had one teacher. We had a teacher that taught 40 years. She taught me, she taught my children, and she even taught three of the grand children. She was a devoted teacher. She taught a long, long time. If she was sick or out, I remember we had a substitute teacher that would come in. Let’s see, wait a minute, let’s see if I’m giving you. Yeah they had a substitute teacher come in. It was a Mrs. March. Let me see, what was her name? She was from Smithfield. Her name…I know she was a Blount that she would substitute. If I could make a little correction, I had a couple of teachers because like from, I think it was the first, second, and third was one room and then you go to the next room. And I had two teachers because this teacher where I told you was there so many years her name was Mattie Jordan, Mattie B. Jordan. She lived in Carrollton. That was her home. And when we moved up to after we passed the third grade then we went to the next room which we had a teacher by the name. She was single. Her name was Estelle Wilson and while she was there she married my first teacher’s brother. The she became Mrs. Jordan. So I did have two teachers and like I said some times a substitute teacher would come in if the teacher had to be out. And they were all the teachers that I had.
Q: Do you know when your school was opened or have any information about the history of the building?
A: I certainly don’t. I’ve never heard anybody say. No, I’ve never heard that.
Q: Do you recall if the number of rooms ever changed? Was it always a two-room school?
A: Always the two rooms.
Q: How did you get to and from school?
A: I walked. We walked.
Q: About much distance are we talking about?
A: Well, for a portion of the time we walked five miles.
Q: One way?
A: One way. Five miles one way.
Q: Any experiences on those trips to school or anything interesting?
A: Let me see if I can recall. Like part of the time that we lived closer to the school then my father rented, moved in Carrollton on a farm which we, he was a farmer and that’s when we walked the five miles to school. We would walk and not miss a day. My youngest sister of all, which I was one of the younger ones. My baby sister of all, if it snowed or anything she would get up in the morning. She would start crying ‘cause she wanted to go to school. My father had a hand-made sleigh and he had horses—we lived down a long lane and he would go out and open that lane with the sleigh and take us out to the road. We would walk through snow to school. And we would go to school and not miss a day the whole year round regardless to what come or what go. We didn’t have any incidents on the road. I remember that as we walked the road during that time when they put James River Bridge across…was put there, I remember walking to and they were saying that this bridge, James River Bridge. Well we were walking in Carrollton then up to P-Hill School, to our school. I don’t know anything happening in that time, but my grandmother was one of the first person I’ve ever know to get killed with a car. And there wasn’t even cars ‘cause we could walk days and days and didn’t see a car coming either way. But she got killed with a car. It was a man, he was a lawyer, a man from Norfolk and it was one man that lived here that she knew and he stopped to give her a ride by she not being used to cars she crossed the road and this man hit her, and killed my grandmother. I was just a little girl. We were going to school; we were at school when it happened. Anything else I know we just had fun walking to school. We would line up with the rest of the crowd and we’d walk to school and back, you know, and have fun even walking in the snow.
Q: Did you have any jobs to do before you went to school or after you got home, chores?
A: Always. My father was a farmer and we didn’t have any mother. My mother died when I was six years old. My oldest sisters took care of us so we all had to work. My father was a workingman and he taught all of us how to work. We had to work. He would give us a job. Everybody when you old enough he taught us responsibility. He would give us a little job. I think my first little job was to close the chicken house at night. You had better do that. It better not come in the morning that those chickens were out. You’d be told one time then something else would take place, if you did. So that’s the way he did us and as I got older you picked up another job or he’d give us another little responsibility so as time went on until I was about ten years old. Then he got married again and my stepmother took over some of the work. But we cooked and worked in the field and then when we come home like in the spring time of the year we come home, I mean in the summer, we would come home we had to work in the fields, maybe do a little work in the field such as that. He taught all of us how to work.
Q: Were there jobs that had to be done at school before you could start the school day?
A: Well, if we cleaned up, we wouldn’t have to clean up. Like usually in the afternoon when school was out we would, you know, we would see that the schoolhouse was clean. As Mr. Walker was speaking about putting down this oil on the floor, as I saw it I understood it, it was to keep the dust down. We just had wooden floors. At P-Hill this place was a sandy place and it was a lot of dust. They greased the floors to keep the dust from rising. It may preserve, I don’t know, it may preserve, too, but it would keep the dust down ‘cause I can remember in the old church. It was a church there, too. The old church is still there and the old school is still there. Then they turned it…they made it into a house and lived into it, but it’s still sitting there. And they did that to keep a lot of the dust from rising. You know when children get moving around so must dust the floor so it wouldn’t be dusty in there.
Q: Did the girls have any jobs they had to do specifically or just cleaning up?
A: We had ______________ that’s all. The paper, pick up the paper and everything.
Q: The boys took care of going out and getting wood or?
A: Yes, that what we had—wood fire and later on they had coal, but most of it was wood. They would tend, the boys, you know, it wasn’t that much to do really, but my teacher drove a horse and buggy to school. And the boys would have to feed that…the hay would be in the back of the jumper where she rode in. Mornings when she get there they would tie the horse, unhook the horse and tie the horse out there and then they would go out there at noon time and feed the horse, put the feed for the horse. And they would keep the fire going.
Q: How did the school day start?
A: Nine o’clock. Start at nine and nine to three.
Q: Did you have a certain way that you started the day before you could start classes?
A: Yes, we had like devotions. We would sing a song and have a prayer.
Q: Did individual students take charge of devotions or did they follow just what the teacher said?
A: Yeah, they said that together.
Q: What subjects did you cover?
A: Reading, writing, arithmetic, and language. We had writing ‘cause we had writing lessons.
Q: Do you remember any of your textbooks?
A: I really done forgot the name, but like our speller. We even had spelling, too. The book would be a speller, a geography, a language, arithmetic.
Q: Did you have a favorite subject?
A: Oh, I liked reading and spelling.
Q: Lunchtime was that a combination of lunch and recess?
A: Right.
Q: What did you do for lunch?
A: We had like; I think that we had an hour and a half for dinner and play. We just ate our lunch on outside. When we get there…our desks had under here and space under there to put your books and things and our lunch would be put under there. We would take our lunch and go outside ‘less it was bad weather and we would just sit in the school and eat our lunch in school and we would play games. Such games as we could play. We had a game called…hmm what did they call that game? It was a game that all the children would sit in a row, okay you would whisper in the first one’s ear and tell them something and they tell it to the next one and the next one and the next one and when it get back to the end it would be all together different from what it started out. Gossip or something they called it. We had to do little indoor games when it rained, when the weather was bad and we couldn’t go out.
Q: The recess that you had, what games did you play outside?
A: We had quite a few games that the girls played. ‘Cause we played ball at (END OF TAPE)
Q:
A: Recess. Well, we hurried and ate our lunch so we could play our games. And we played ball, too. Mostly the girls played dodge ball. I don’t know if you know what that is. Okay we played dodge ball and then some times the girls would even play the bat ball like with the boys. Mostly they had the game played that. Then we had ring games. We had a game “A tisket-a-tasket”, and then we had “Buckeye Rabbit”, “Over and Under”, and we had quite a few ring games that we played.
Q: What is the “Buckeye Rabbit’?
A: You just catch hold of hands and skip around in a ring. It went “Old buckeye rabbit”, the half would say, “Ha, ha, you stole my cabbage, ha, ha, when I was sleeping, ha, ha, and I mean to get him, ha, ha, when the next day come, ha, ha”. Just say that over and over and hold hands and skip around in a ring. And the tisket-a-tasket was you have a ring game. One would go around and skip and drop whatever they called a basket—a tisket-a-tasket, I lost my yellow basket—and they would drop it and they could pick it up if they could catch you before you get back to your place you was out. So that’s the way we played that one. And then we played “Over and Under Rolling Thunder”. Let me see if I can describe that. We loved that little game. We get in a line. Two of them would hold hands up like this and we’d start from the back and they would come under. When each one coming under and the line keep going this way and they say over and under rolling thunder, gimme the glass to drink wine, oh gimme the glass to drink wine, I don’t want no more, _____________, gimme the glass to drink wine. That was kinda fast, kinda spunky, you know. And that was cute ‘cause you keep going under, the line keep going this way while the others hold hands the one behind you keep coming under file through. And that was a lot of fun.
Q: That does sound cute.
A: And then we used play one that, let’s see what was that one. You throw the ball over the school. Let me see. I don’t know if I can remember the name of that one, but it’s something that you say and throw the ball over the school and somebody would be on the other side to catch it. We had quite a few games that we played.
Q: How would you describe your school’s classroom?
A: Maybe box room just like this and windows. I think we had a couple of windows on this side. And this was the door that we would come in back here. The other room would be right from there. Just like a little box room and the two windows.
Q: How was it heated?
A: With wood and coal.
Q: And your rest room?
A: Outdoors, outside.
Q: Your water supply?
A: They had a pump and we pumped the water. They had a bucket and they would bring it in. They like what you would call a cloak room where they kept things, the papers and things and we set the water in there.
Q: The teacher’s desk and student’s desk, what were they like?
A: When we were reading or getting lessons we would have our books on here, but I told you we had a place underneath where you put your books. You had to keep your desk clean, and your books went under here when you weren’t using them. When you used them, you put your books on top of your desk. And the teacher’s desk was practically the same with her books and her little things that she used. As they say, the punishment would be mostly, not the higher grades, but the first, second, and third the teacher used to have a little paddle. I’ve even seen her have a ruler. And she used to beat the children on the hands if they didn’t obey.
Q: Did you have a blackboard?
A: Yes, a blackboard like on one side of the room where—you know, I told you only windows was on this side and this was next to the other one—and they had a blackboard back here—a big wide blackboard.
Q: Did you have any other teaching aids, anything on the walls, any charts or anything?
A: I don’t recall anything. There wasn’t much papers and literature and stuff at that time. I don’t recall things on the wall no more than like a calendar.
Q: How did you get your lighting?
A: Well, let me see. We didn’t have any electric. Just during the day we just had daylight. I’m thinking further back when Mr. Walker was they had less. I don’t think he’s as old as I am. (Chuckles)
Q: Did you have a cloakroom and if not, where did you hang your coats?
A: They had a cloakroom. They had this one room I told you the children put their clothes. They had some shelves in there where the teachers put papers and things in there. That was all they had to store anything in.
Q: What was the situation with discipline and punishment?
A: Well, if you was disobedient, we had one teacher in the lower grades would paddle children with the paddle. But the higher grades the teacher didn’t make no effort to. She would always send a letter home to the parents. And that was better because parents were more concerned with their children then. ‘Cause you know when we was old enough to go to school, like I said we didn’t have any mother, but I had a good father. He would tell say, “You going to school and I don’t want the teacher to have write, I don’t want the teacher to have to send me no letters to say you been disobedient. And don’t come back here with no tale that this one done that and that one done the other.” That was the rule he gave us when we went to school. So I didn’t have any problem at school. I never been in a fight at school ‘cause I wasn’t the fighting kind. I didn’t find that children were that bad anyway in that time. The little spats they would get in wouldn’t amount to anything. I saw no real fight among the children.
Q: Are there any other school experiences that you would like to tell us about?
A: When I was real small we had a girl that went to our school and she was like a person that didn’t never develop in her mind. She was just like maybe well, fifteen/sixteen years old; she didn’t learn, but they let her come to school. You know, she didn’t have the ability to learn. During every month she would have seizures and that would turn whole school up. It would scare everybody and everybody would run outside when she had these seizures. Course, I guess now they wouldn’t be letting a child go to school like that, but they let her go to school. She was older than I was, but she was a big girl. And when she had these seizures, if she was close to you, the first thing she would do she would try to make her way to catch hold on you. The children were just frightened of her and then everybody would just run out the school. That was the only thing that I know of incident that I can remember happened at school.
Q: Any other childhood memories that you recall growing up?
A: I don’t know. I would say at that time we were pretty happy children. It wasn’t nothing to go to much like it is today, and we were happing just roaming, you know, at home. We lived on a big farm on the water and we would roam the hills and play and climb trees and swing on the grape vines and do all that and we were just happy children. Even though we didn’t have a mother we was happy children. We sisters and brothers always loved each other, and we didn’t get in fights and things. In fact, I never see fighting at that time, as it is now no way. ‘Cause at school you didn’t have it, they didn’t allow it that to happen.
Q: When you finished elementary and high school, what jobs did you notice or have, and are there any other experiences that you can recall in the county in changes?
A: I only went to high school one year because I didn’t have transportation. I went to training school—they called it the training school. I went one year to high school and that was it. I got married young. I was only 16 so I didn’t really get any more education after that. I was a reader. I loved to read. I would read and when I came along there wasn’t even much to read, but I would read anything that I come across. I can recall this at my home—I and my sister we had a room upstairs and we had Venetian blinds. Well, my father they had their ways in that time. At eight o’clock you go to bed. I didn’t want to go to bed. I would go upstairs in my room and the house was a big ole house with a fireplace on each end and had a fireplace upstairs and downstairs. Although we didn’t make fire upstairs into it—the old fashioned fireplaces. I would get down on the hearth with a lamp and I would read. My father went outdoors one night and the blinds wasn’t closed and he saw the light, so he yelled up there, “Put that light out and go to bed!” So I was disobedient ‘cause I loved to read, so after that I made sure those blinds went to at night and pulled the shutters, too so he couldn’t see no light. And I would get down on the floor on the hearth and I would set the lamp down there and I would read. And I used to love to draw. I loved to read. I would like to tell the experience how our classes went. Okay, like spelling classes all the kids would get in a line to stand up. And you started from the top and the teacher would call you the word and you spell it. But if the first one didn’t spell it, if they couldn’t spell it, if the second could spell it they cut you down. You had to move down and that one moves up. And that would make the kids really try to learn how to spell because you wanted to be standing at the head of your class. And that’s the way the class was. I mean she’d come on down and each one would spell. If you couldn’t spell it, next one spell it cut you down. You had to move down they move up. And that’s the same way with reading. They didn’t do that cutting down. We would read a story in our reader. And after you read it, you had to tell it. But you didn’t tell the whole story. The person who started the first part of the story tell a certain distance then the next one would pick it up, and they tell a certain distance and the next one would pick it up. And you tell the whole story that you read. And that’s the way we did that. We did our arithmetic on the board. The arithmetic would be done on the board. We did more on the board than we did on paper ‘cause like we didn’t have to have a whole lot of paper. One tablet would last you ever so long just homework because just about everything was on the board and the teacher would point to it and you’d work the examples on the board and everything.
Q: Did you have anything else that you want to add to your information?
A: Right now I can’t think, but all I say I got along well with my teachers. In fact, I think most children did. Got along and I liked my teachers all right and we would do little things for them—bring them little things, you know, from home that we could bring—an apple or something. And we loved our teachers and it seemed sorta like homelike at school. It wasn’t like you were in a strange place; it was rather like at home. I wanna tell this. The teacher, if someone took something like the children maybe have a quarter, nickel, or dime. Okay, we did have some little thieves that would take the money, you know. When you go out to play some of them would steal your money. So if you took someone’s money, before that school turned out the teacher would make everybody put everything in their desk on top and she would walk from one to the other and search and search your pocket. And she’d come cross it many times. I remember one girl that had took a quarter and she know the teacher was going to catch her so when the teacher got close to her she dropped on her lap. The quarter rolled right on down on the floor. So then she said if you have any money—our money was nickels, dimes, and quarters—in the morning when you get you bring it and put it on her desk and she took care of it. That broke the stealing it. So like I said the teachers were very interested in the children’s welfare and everything. And I recall that she wouldn’t even let you—you know like kids wear their hair all down in their eyes and face now—our teacher didn’t allow us to do that. When I grew up I had real long hair and a lot of the children had long hair. They used plait it in these three pieces and this one plait would be hanging down here. She’d make you pin that plait back. She’d say you cannot see your lesson peeping through your hair and she would make them put their hair back. In fact, we couldn’t wear our hair lose; you had to braid your hair. That was what we had to do; we had to braid our hair.
Q: Anything else?
A: No. I can tell you about a funny little game that like kids get going at school. It was the funniest little thing. I don’t recall how it got there, but somebody got it there. It’s a little thing that we used to play. And it was a funny thing if you would come up and see us doing it; you’d say what in the world are these kids doing. It was something they called “Knock on Dinah”. And I mean they could really do it. And we used to get out there at recess and everybody would be going up and down. If you would drive up and see these children going up and down like that you’d say what in the world are they doing. And they say we knocking ______, we knocking on __________. It went like this. (Demonstrates) It went like that and it was a lot of fun. The kids used play it all the time. People would pass and stop and look at us and as much as to say what are they doing. So that was another, I guess you could call it a game that we would do. You know, they made music with their hands and the boys could really do it. They could go all down under shoe and come up like that. Then they could go all ________ and then come back. I mean it just made like a little tune like that they would make with their hands. That went on for a long time; that lasted a long time. Like I said we just had simple things to do, simple games, simple things to do. There wasn’t a whole lot to do. Wasn’t a whole lot of thing for to go to, wasn’t nothing much to go to. Just play games and so forth and so on. The school maybe would have a little entertainment. You know you were chaperoned. You only went with your—you had to have a grownup go with you and your parent or your older sister went with you or something like that. That was it. We went to church. I had to go to church. Every Sunday we didn’t go to church we wasn’t going to go play. We would go play with the neighbors and they used to come play with us. But we went to church first, then after that you could go play. Like say, we just had a simple life. It was simple but we was happy. We were poor and we didn’t know we were poor ‘cause everybody was poor. I never know nothing about hungry. My father was jack-of-all-trades and we had plenty to eat and plenty to give to other people that was in distress. Life was just simple. We used to thought my father was hard; but after I grew up I was proud of my father. I said I had a good father. Maybe I shouldn’t say this for it to be published. My father would never let us work on the white man’s farm. A lot of the kids used to work in the field like pick string beans and things, and we would want to go ‘cause we wanted to be with the crowd. He said, “No, you’re not gonna do it.” He never would let us. We worked at home, but he would never let us work in the field for them. ‘Cause he said they don’t know how to treat you and I’m not gonna let you do; you are just children, you not gonna work. And he never did. My father well trained us without a mother. He taught us right from wrong. He said you know what belong to you and what don’t belong to you. We couldn’t bring nothing home. I don’t care how simple it was. He would say, “Where did you get it?” And we would say well I found it at school. He would say, “Did you give it to the teacher?” So that she could find out who lost it. We say no and he would say, “Take it right back tomorrow.” That’s the way we had to walk a chalk line. After I got older and see how the kids do, I say my father well trained us and I’m so glad today that it followed me through life. He taught us responsibility. I didn’t have a lazy sister or brother. After they grew up most of my family mostly migrated to New Jersey because they couldn’t find enough work to do here, as they got old and left home. Most of my family went to New Jersey and made their home there. I have one sister there and all the sisters are gone now but three. I got one brother and he’s partially blind. I got one sister younger than I am and one sister older than I am and the rest of us are gone, though we were together once.
Q: I want to thank you for your information and I really appreciate your coming in.
A: Well, I forget a lot of things now at my age, but some things I guess will always be with me. I just can’t remember the year, what year it was that.
Q: Well, we can figure that out.
A: Yeah, you can ‘cause as I said I went to the twelfth grade there. And I went to school when I was six years old. Another thing that they had then was you didn’t have to wait ‘til a certain age to go to school. You know, like what you got to be seven now? Okay, we went six. And also I skipped a class. You could skip a class if you was good enough. You didn’t have to take it. Which I didn’t take the first grade because my grandmother. Remember I had no mother and my grandmother used to live close to us. She didn’t stay in the house with us but she’d come every day and we had our books and she’d give us a certain amount to read or what to do and she’d say, “Now you better learn it, you better get it before dinner because you’re not gonna get your dinner ‘til you can read it. And sometimes we be playing thinking we had plenty time. And dinnertime come and we didn’t have it right and she say, “Go right back and learn it before you get your dinner.” When I went to school I knew my ABCs, I could count from one to a hundred. That’s the way we started. They don’t do that now. We start saying ABCs. That would be the first thing she do. You say from A to Z then you learn to say them backward. Okay, you count from one to a hundred and you say them backwards. That’s the way we would begin the school. So I didn’t even go in the first grade ‘cause I could do all that ‘cause I learnt that at home. They didn’t hold you back if you knew the grade. They wouldn’t keep you back you just go on to the next grade. When I went to school I started second grade.
Q: Thank you very much, Mrs. Savage.
A: You welcome.
Q: Thank you very much.