West Bend, Wi – For over 15 years, Dave Bohn wrote down memories of his childhood growing up on the family farm just south of West Bend on Hwy P. While Dave is no longer with us, he still had more stories he wrote that he wanted to share. His hope was that his writings would preserve the often-overlooked stories of ordinary farmers and everyday farm life in rural Washington County during the Great Depression through the eyes of a local farm boy.
We lived just up the hill from Rusco School, which was a small one-room schoolhouse on the corner of Hwy P and Rusco Road. I went to Rusco School in 1st and 2nd grade and then again in 5th through 8th grade (For 3rd and 4th grade, I went to Holy Angels school so I could receive my First Holy Communion).
There were about 25 kids in all from 1st through 8th grade who went to Rusco School. Since there were so few kids at the school and they all lived on nearby farms, I remember them all and I made lifelong friendships with a few of them.
There wasn’t much to Rusco School as it was a one-room schoolhouse, but the school grounds were quite large, a total of about two acres. There was an old graveyard from the last century on the school grounds with a fence around it. It was in the back near the outhouse, and it was not kept up at all. It was completely overgrown with brush and trees as it still is today.
In the schoolhouse, there was a big round wood burning stove that sat in the back of the classroom. Farmers in the area would bring wood to burn in the stove for heat. There was a woodshed next to the school where the wood was stored along with an axe for the eighth-grade boys to split the wood into pieces to fit in the stove.
Click HERE to read a recent story about Audrey Peters,
mentioned in the above photo
Each year in spring (I think it was spring), a photographer from the newspaper came out to Rusco School to take our picture. It wasn’t like school pictures nowadays. It was a group picture with the teacher and all the school kids. We’d all go outside and line up, somewhat according to size, against the side of the schoolhouse. The photographer would take the group picture and publish it in the West Bend News and the West Bend Pilot, as there were two newspapers in West Bend at that time.
The year I was in 5th grade, I decided we all should make a face for the picture. I talked to all the kids ahead of time. I don’t remember how many kids said they would go along with it and make a face, but when the photo was developed, Willard Peters and I were the only ones making a face. While I don’t remember getting into much trouble for doing this, I don’t think my mom was too happy with me.
That was the year I may as well not have gone to school at all, as I didn’t learn a darn thing. I was rebelling a little and I didn’t like the teacher. It wasn’t the best year for me, so I may as well have stayed home. I kind of turned the corner and became a wise guy after my two years at Holy Angels. Holy Angels was really strict, and you towed the line there. Rusco School was much more lenient. I could get away with more there and I did that year, or at least I tried.
At Rusco School, we had a 15-minute recess each morning and afternoon and a one-hour break at noon for lunch and recess. At recess, we would go outside to play if the weather was ok. In the winter, we almost always went sledding or built a snowman or a fort during recess. Kids would bring their sleds to school. If the weather was too cold and we had to stay inside, the older kids would play Sheepshead.
When the weather was warmer, we would sometimes play Prisoner’s Base and Pom Pom Pull-Away. I can’t remember exactly how they were played, but there were two teams against each other with lots of running. Whatever we were playing, there was never enough time to have a winner in a 15-minute recess, so it usually would end with an argument about nothing.
More often though, we would get a softball game going during recess and lunch. We played on the school grounds outside of the fenced-in cemetery. Sometimes we’d hit the ball into the cemetery. Someone would just go in and get it; it wasn’t a big deal.
Our softball field had one big problem though. In the center of the ball field was a big apple tree. When you hit the ball, it would almost always hit the tree and mess up the ball game. One day, we decided that tree just had to go.
I went to the woodshed and got the axe. I started to chop down that apple tree. I just got a good start when the teacher came running out of the school, waving his arms and yelling at me to stop. He was really angry with me for what I was doing. Right then, I knew I was in deep trouble.
After a tongue lashing, he sent me home to get some paint to put on the tree where I was chopping, as the paint would stop the sap from running out and hopefully prevent the tree from dying. And the teacher definitely did not want that tree to die.
I didn’t want my parents to know what I had done, so I sneaked home. Without them knowing, I got some paint from the shed and painted the tree where I had chopped it. I don’t know if my parents ever found out what happened, but my teacher made me write one hundred times:
I will not chop trees because they want to live, too.
I will not chop trees because they want to live, too.
I will not chop trees because they want to live, too.
That was a lot of writing for me as a 5th grade boy and I learned my lesson to never do this again.
I guess the paint on the chop marks worked as the apple tree lived a long time afterwards. I was thankful for that, but it still was a problem whenever we played our ball game.
