Today is Saturday March 12th, we’re at the Visitor’s Center here in Smithfield and our first interview this morning will be with Mrs. Earnestine Turner, and she is going to tell us about her memories of her days in elementary school.
Q: First Mrs. Turner would you tell us what area of Isle of Wight did you grow up in?
A: Tan Road area. T-a-n Road.
Q: How many sisters and brothers did you have?
A: I had 4 sisters and 3 brothers.
Q: Did they all attend the same county schools as you?
A: The younger ones did not. The same county schools, yes, but not the high school.
Q: What school did you attend for the first grade up thru elementary?
A: Muddy Cross, grades 1-3 or maybe 4…and then Bridger School through the 7th.
Q: You attended both schools up to the 7th grade.
A: Right.
Q: How many classrooms were there at Muddy Cross?
A: I remember one.
Q: And did they close Muddy Cross and you moved to Bridger?
A: That is correct.
Q: Do you recall some of the teachers that you had in the first 7 grades?
A: Yes. Miss Mattie Jordan and Mrs. Parker.
Q: One of them was at Muddy Cross and when you went to Bridger it was 2 rooms?
A: It was Mrs. Parker from Suffolk that came with us when we went to Bridger.
Q: Do you recall any of the history of Muddy Cross or what year perhaps that it closed?
A: I don’t remember the year. I remember there were long walks down the sandy road. I remember the swamp, walking across on a tree--to get from one place to the other. I remember bringing in wood for the stove and the boys going out to get lightwood, which was the wood with a lot of pine in it, which would burn easy. The evening before, I remember my grandfather, the men would pick _____ and would cut a lot of wood…and then boys would bring it in the school as it was needed. It wasn’t really too bad, it was warm and pleasant. The stoves were not the cast iron kind; they were more like the tin heater kind. So you had to keep putting wood in constantly to keep the fire going. When we came to Bridger School we started using some coal with the wood…and the stoves were as I recall cast iron or they were iron…and they were on 4 legs but they were higher. I remember cooking things on top of the stove at Bridgers.
Q: You were not able to do that at Muddy Cross?
A: If so, I don’t remember. I just don’t remember.
Q: You said you walked to school. Do you recall how long a walk that was?
A: I had first cousins, 3 boys. They had bicycles. So they road me in the handle bars because I was the only girl coming out of the family. I don’t remember the exact amount of time. They were old enough to be looking at the girls. I do remember them leaving me on a pile of straw by the tree while they would be seeing the girls down the road, then picking me up and taking me home. I don’t remember the exact amount of time. When I got to Bridger School it was a much shorter distance. We could do that in 45 minutes, if we would walk straight from home to school.
Q: Did you have any chores you had to do before you went to school?
A: Yes. I don’t remember having chores at night. But at Bridger School, with the number of sisters and brothers, I’m the oldest so I always had to be sure everybody had there books and their lunch on their own books in the morning while we were getting dressed. So when it was time to step out the house you had your own set of books, lunch or whatever you had to take. I remember my sister next to me, my grandmother lived across the field, she would always go over, and I had to always end up bringing her books to her. Then in the 4th or 5th grade my aunt built a house opposite grandmother’s home. She did not have any children. So my third sister was always at her house…and she would help her with her homework and that kind of thing. When I left Bridger School by that time we were walking to the highway and riding the bus. I know that my younger sisters and brothers rode the bus. But I walked many days from where we lived to Bridger School.
Q: How do you remember the school day starting once everyone had gotten into the building?
A: I remember we did the Pledge of Allegiance, I remember that. I can’t remember if we had prayer but we had like morning devotion…and I remembered distinctively the flag. I thought I would never learn to say the Pledge of Allegiance…but that I remember.
Q: What do you recall about your subjects and the classes you had?
A: Writing, Arithmetic and Spelling.
Q: Do you recall any particular textbooks or Readers?
A: I don’t know whether it was at Bridger or Muddy Cross but I remember “See Jane” or “See Dick” or something, I remember. And that was the earliest book I can remember.
Q: Do you recall if the school year began as a regular September through May or were there any changes in that? Did you go for 7-8 months?
A: I am not sure about that. But I know that during the time for crops, for larger children, in the fall they would be getting up the peanuts and what have you and did not come to school regularly. But I don’t remember when exactly it started. I want to think it was later in September because later on we started to go to school earlier than that.
Q: What do you remember about your recess and lunch period?
A: At Bridger’s School, I guess it was the county that gave out food like prunes, raisins, rice, and things…. and they would cook on the pot belly stove. So that was part of whatever you brought from home. And I remember we had to say grace before we ate.
Q: What do you remember about the classroom? What was in there and was there anything in particular in stood out?
A: I remember desks- was the one desk, I can’t remember that great but it was better than Muddy Cross. We still did not get new seats because I can remember they had cravings in them. But they looked awful nice to us. And then we had to clean them up. The first part of the year when they were there when school opened…and the larger children cleaned them up. They looked shiny; I can’t remember what we used. But we scrubbed them down and they looked very nice, we thought.
Q: What do you remember about the discipline or punishment that was given at that time or was if needed?
A: If needed you received it. I remember one that I will never forget. Mrs. Parker, had beautiful hand writing and you were to write the way the lower case, upper case as you were taught…and I had a first cousin who had come home from the city and she had this beautiful ‘w’ kind like a we. And all summer I made that ‘w’. And when I went to school I had made up my mind that that was the way I was going to make my ‘w’…and she had said several times that is not the way I taught you and to the board. That’s the only time I remember her putting her hand, with a ruler, a spanking with the ruler. From that day on I made that ’w’ the way she wanted the ‘w’ made. A lot of emphasis was put on how to form your alphabets. I get that was why tell called it writing and arithmetic and what have you because that was a really part of your learning experience. The lower case was the lower case, and the upper was the upper and you did not use it unless it was the proper way to do for whatever you were doing at that point and time.
Q: Do you recall any other positive memories about school, your teachers or classmates?
A: We had, I think it was in May; we would have something around the flagpole. I remember the parents would come. I think it was called May Day. That was in some ways a wonderful time for us. And when we needed _____ for school, the parents would put on something and it was called flip-flop. It was in a shoebox. You would make the cookies or candy or whatever you wanted, these were the older girls…and the boys would buy your food and he didn’t know what was in the box. And you would get to share what was in the box for pairing it would be on Saturday nights…not only the children at school, but children who had graduated or dropped out of school would come and participate. It was a kind of social thing. You know if a person bought your food several times, we’d declare that was your special friend. But the parents would have prepared a food that was in the box. It was cakes, cookies and homemade candy and that kind of things.
Q: Any other school experiences that you thought were very positive or special events?
A: We had several girls and one boy who had a lovely voice, they just sang better than the rest of us. In the afternoon, after the last class and you had cleaned up the desks and what have you, we would sing songs but 3 or 4 persons would get to sing something special because they sang alone, just that small group. I remember the boys bringing in the coals in the afternoon, and banking the heater so the next morning it was easy to make the fire…and they didn’t have to go outside. I guess it was warmer in the afternoon, but those coals and whatever those buckets were called they brought the coal in with.
Q: Do you have any negative memories of your early school days?
A: They are negative now, but they weren’t negative then. It was happy going to school. I have been there and your hands would be aching so badly from walking the distance, but everybody else was going through the same thing. So you would warm them at the fire, put them in water or wrap them in your sweater. It was like that as a negative experience now but it did not seem that way then, it did not seem bad at all. We thought we were moving up when we walked to #10 to catch the school because we had been walking all the way to school prior to that. Then the younger children in the family, the bus came down the dirt road. The textbooks we had were never new. It seems like to me we always got this big box of books and the teacher would get them out according to grades. I did not realize until much later in life that they had come from the other schools, down to us. I remember comparing to see which book had something torn out of it or the back was more soiled than the next person’s books. I remember those experiences.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your elementary school days?
A: There was a much closer relationship between the church and the school. At Muddy Cross Church, I guess was in high school before I started to recognize denominations. The majority of the parents belonged to the church and the minister also would participate if something special was going on at the school, because the school and church was right there on the same grounds. So there certainly was not any denominational thing like I said I did not realize they were not Baptist or Methodist. I must have been a teenager before I realized the difference. That’s how well the school and the church mixed. I think it helped by the school sharing and the church.
Q: The last question on our interview is to ask you to give and autobiographical sketch of your life after high school and college. Just a brief note of the highlights of things you did and accomplished, perhaps family, if you want to do that.
A: I went back for my first masters after I got married. I worked for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. When I started working for them in the central office and my territory was from Illinois, Chicago to Alabama but I was home for the weekends. A lot of the time I worked right out of Washington and brought a lot of the work home. Some where in the middle sixties I home based in Hampton. At that point I did my research activity and my review for VA hospitals, like you had earn commission for regular hospitals was on the west coast. If we had problems then I would trouble shoot it. I published a couple of things having to do with health care. I received several awards and the State gave me the last one. I was ___ Nurse of the Year, just before I was getting ready to retire. I can’t remember the things I received from the VA I received rewards for turning various hospitals around or bringing them up to the requirements. I trained assistant chiefs for long term care, being adjunct with Hampton University made it easy for me to have them and they could have access to the University library as well as the public library. I did that up until about 5 years ago, I retired.
Q: Any family highlights you would like to mention or add in or that all you want to tell us?
A: Well we did not have our son until Stanley and I both were…we did not get married until I was 29 and he was 30 and Darrell until, I guess we were in our 40’s. It was easier for us to have him in school in Hampton, so he was in private school. A little joke on the side— I had my own routine, I would take the route and I would drop him off to school and then I would go. One morning I was getting a report and a policeman called said Mrs. Turner one of your nurses had left their baby out here in the car. Guess whose baby it was? My own baby was out there in the car. I was not used to having to do all these things and you started getting calls before leaving home of problems…and so I just left early and that was a joke all the way though the 7th grade, that his mama left him in the car. Before we had Darrell a lot of times I would just stay over on the weekends and come home on Sunday because most of the people-- our friends, and the people you work with, you tend to hang out with, spend more time with them. We lived so far in the boonies that before some of the people would come to the county and do things with us, that weaned away from spending so much time in the work arena and started taking off people that we knew from way back here in the county and in our church. We became more active in our church as we got older.
Q: If you have nothing else you want to tell us we will bring our interview to an closed for today and we want to thank you very much for the time you have given us this morning to let us know of your school experiences and memories. Thank you very much Mrs. Turner.
A: You’re certainly welcome.