Ten Dollars a Month

Before I was 6 years old I had crossed Canada twice.
Not alone of course, so did my parents and brother and sister.
And when we resettled in the Allen family home in 1953, in Sable River, I was old enough to start school. Actually I was only 5 and a half.
School was a one room white building next door to Thelma Harlow’s grocery store.
Grades 1 to 3 went in the morning. Grades 4 to 6 went in the afternoon.
It was a mile walk from where we lived. I remember walking most of the time.
In Grade two my sister joined the trek and in Grade 3 there were three of us.
It’s funny what you remember.
I remember breaking off a dried fern stalk in the ditch and using a piece of it to imitate smoking a cigarette as I walked to school. The dried fern stalk was porous so you could suck air through it and on a frosty morning, inhale and exhale and make it appear as if smoke was being exhaled…it was what most adults did so it seemed natural to practice.

I don’t know what acts of maturity I demonstrated that made me a candidate for the work at the school that actually paid money. But in Grade 5 I received a letter which I think I still have in some papers my Mom gave me a number of years ago. The letter stated that I had been hired to build the fires ( in the stove in the middle of the school house floor), sweep the floors, and fill the water coolers. This work would be done in the morning before classes and I would be paid $10.00 per month.

My parents scrapped to raise their family which expanded by one more when I was 7. The job provided me with spending money. I bought my first new bike out of the catalogue. I would have to make up any other specific details on expenditures but I’m sure it helped out the overall situation although I was never asked to put any of what I earned into the family budget.

I remember feeling grown-up to be trusted with these responsibilities. I enjoyed being in the school when no other kids were present. Feeling the heat off the fire I built warm the classroom, smelling the pine smelling dust retardant that I spread around the floors before sweeping, taking the first drinks of water out of the cooler with a throw away cone shaped cup and leaving before anyone arrived some how made me feel special and I was always sure to do a good job so as not to get any negative comments from the teachers.

Friendly Mrs. Quinlan taught the morning Grades and the stern Mrs. Freeman (who taught my Dad) taught the afternoon Grades. In grade 7, I began taking the bus 12 miles to Lockeport so my early morning walks and bike rides between home and the school were soon shoved to the past.

Years later, I was shown a picture of the old school being moved down the highway through Sable. Someone had bought it and turned it into a home on a piece of land they’d bought.Sometimes, I wonder if there is still someone building fires in a wood heater and sweeping the hardwood floors of the building that provided me with my first steady paycheck. If my grades throughout the rest of my school years were as good as those I achieved at the Sable River West one room school I most certainly would have become famous for something.