"The Wave" at Pioneer Townsite

Weaver School playground ride installed at Museum

   I started the first grade at Weaver School, Consolidated #13, west of Frederick in 1959.

   There was no such thing as kindergarten in those days -- at least, not for country kids. Sure, town kids could attend a kindergarten class but the school at Weaver started with Grade 1.

   Mrs. Latimer's 1st and 2nd grade classroom (yep... two grades per teacher and classroom) was at the north end of the school's long, long hallway. I can still remember the sights, sounds, smells and feelings from that classroom, and I'll bet that every other student can, too. It was a pretty wonderful place.

   And... Just outside the door of the classroom was an impressive piece of playground equipment. It was sort of a sinister merry-go-round, but much too big and dangerous for 1st graders. There was a small, regular merry-go-round for the youngsters that was located in another part of the playground. As I recall, you had to be in at least the third grade to ride the Wave.

   Like a merry-go-round, it did have benches all the way around, and it did turn. But... It also rocked and crashed against a center pole, making a big "BANG" noise and hitting hard enough to rattle your teeth. Of course, that was the fun of it. I don't remember anyone actually getting hurt on the Wave... but they probably could have.

  Although I may not have ridden the Wave as a 1st grader, my classmates and I certainly did later... for years. The fun of it was getting enough people on board to make it crash and bounce in a lopsided manner as it turned. It was a good time.

   I have no idea how long the Wave had been in place just outside at the school's north door. I'm sure that it was there for many years prior to my arrival at the school in 1959.

   One summer in the mid-to-late 1960s, the Wave disappeared. It was taken out because the Weaver board and administration decided that it was too dangerous. It was a real disappointment to arrive back at school that fall to find that the Wave, a fixture of the Weaver playground, was gone.

   After it was removed, Robert McCord purchased the surplus piece of playground equipment and set it up at his home for his daughter Rhonda. And... it remained at the McCord home for years.

   As such things do, it fell into disuse and disrepair. I'm sure that the equipment was not used for many, many years. It rusted, its wooden benches decayed, and it was a shadow of what it used to be.

   Last spring, Robert McCord donated the Wave to the Tillman County Historical Society and the old piece of playground equipment was given a new home, to live on as a visual token of playgrounds past. The Wave was installed at the Pioneer Townsite Museum, just outside the back door of the one-room Horse Creek School. Museum manager Jimmy Espinosa replaced the decayed benches and set its center pole in place. It is easily visible from Floral Street, positioned just inside the museum fence.

   I like seeing it there. It certainly brings back memories for me.

   I must point out, though, that the Wave is now non-functioning. It is locked in place and does not turn at all because, in our safety-conscious society, it would not be advisable to allow anyone to play on it.

   There is, after all, a reason that it was removed from the school playground in the first place!

Historical Society 2013 Raffle

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Replica of Horse Creek School will be given away.

Historical Society to Raffles

Horse Creek School Replica

lucky person will soon have a wonderful piece of Tillman County history in their back yard.

The Tillman County Historical Society’s annual raffle project is a scale reproduction building modeled after the museum’s 1902 Horse Creek School. The building will make an amazing playhouse or a wonderfully distinctive storage shed.

Raffle tickets for the building are $5 each or five for $20 All proceeds will be directed toward operational expenses of the Pioneer Townsite Museum in Frederick.

The winning ticket will be drawn this spring at the historical society’s annual meeting.

The raffle is an annual historical society project that has spanned many years with prizes being reproductions of buildings at the Pioneer Townsite Museum. Past projects have included the 1924 AME Church, the museum’s red barn, the 1902 Frisco Depot, and the museum’s Frisco caboose.

Reproductions of the Horse Creek School have been built in the past, but scale of this year’s building provides broader use that past models. The building is approximately 10 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and 12 feet long.

The building was constructed by Pioneer Townsite director Jimmy Espinosa and the museum’s assigned inmates from the Frederick Work-Release Center.

The historical society purchased lumber and materials for the project from Frederick businesses.

The reproduction schoolhouse is currently on display at the Pioneer Townsite Museum, but can be seen in coming weeks at numerous points in Frederick including the Tillman County Courthouse Square. It will also be featured in Frederick’s Christmas Parade on December 13.

The annual building raffle is the Tillman County Historical Society’s most important fundraising project. All proceeds will be used for operation and maintenance of the Pioneer Townsite Museum in Frederick.

Raffle tickets for the depot building may be purchased at the following locations: BancFirst in Frederick; First National Bank, Frederick; Frederick ACE Hardware; Box, Inc.; the Frederick Chamber of Commerce; Tillco Supply; Southwest Rural Electric in Tipton; and the Pioneer Townsite Museum.

Tickets can also be purchased from any member of the Tillman County Historical Society’s board of directors. They are Merle Atkins, Judy Benson, Jack Bohl, Cacy Caldwell, Su Clifton, Frances Goodknight, Dena Northcutt, Jay Oxford, Roy Perkins, Jim Smith, Kent Smith, Cathy Riggins, Gary Tyler, Virginia Walker, and Joe Wynn.

POST-NOTE: Winner of the schoolhouse replica, drawn during the historical society's annual meeting on April 14, was Don Dunham of Frederick.

Early School Routines

Column sent to Frederick Leader and Frederick Press

August 3, 2010

1902 Horse Creek School at its current site in Frederick's Pioneer Townsite Museum

Horse Creek was typical early School

One of the most popular attractions at the Pioneer Townsite Museum is the one-room Horse Creek School. Current-day school children often visit the school and imagine what it would have been like to attend classes there in the old days.

The school was originally located in the northeast part of Tillman County, four miles north and 7.5 miles east of Manitou. It was built in 1902 and the first term of school was held that year.

There were more than 100 one-room schools like this in the early Tillman County. The territorial governor had laid out plans for rural schools, attempting to have nine sections of land in each school district with the schoolhouse located as near the center as possible. Some of the early school districts had more than nine sections and some less, though, depending on creeks that ran through the school’s area. There were no bridges over the early creeks and children had to be able to walk to school.

The schools served grades one through eight, and were taught by one teacher. They had no electricity and no running water. Every rural school had a well or cistern to provide the drinking water. The cistern was a big hole in the ground, usually about five feet wide, with brick walls and a cover. When rainwater fell on the school building, the water was directed through gutters and pipes into the covered cistern were it was saved for drinking water. This was also how rural people saved water for their homes.

All schoolyards were approximately one acre. Every school had a storm cellar and two outhouses – one for boys and another for girls.

There was no hot lunch program in the early schools. Student lunches were whatever students could bring to eat from home.

The teacher’s only help was what the school children would volunteer to do for them. Children would volunteer to go get coal or water or whatever was needed because they liked to get out of the classroom.

The school day started at 9:00 a.m. Students marched in every morning and stood very straight by their desks. When the teacher greeted the last student through the door, the teacher would go to the front of the room.

The first thing they did was give the flag salute. Next, they had prayer. The teacher and all students who wanted to prayed.

They then quoted scriptures. All teachers tried to help the students learn their Sunday school memory verse for the next Sunday.

They then sang a song. The students could select any songs from the 101 Best Songs for Students songbook.

All teachers believed that students learned by doing. Therefore they read aloud, did spelling lessons orally, and did math on the blackboard.

For discipline, the teachers had a paddle.

In the wintertime, the teacher arrived early at school to start a fire in the school’s stove. Some stoves used coal and others used wood.

A kettle on top of the stove was used to heat water for washing hands.

The early-day teachers were paid anywhere from $18 to $25 a month. The teachers often boarded with a local family.

Horse Creek School was used as a school from 1902 until 1945. The state closed all one-room schools in 1945. By that time many of the one-room school districts had already consolidated to make larger districts.

Also, by the mid-1940s there were fewer families living in the rural school districts. As farmers got tractors they began buying up more land, which left many schools with just one family living on a section of land, whereas there had been as many as 40 families in one district.

Sometime in the early 1940s the North Deep Red Baptist Church, which was located near the Horse Creek School, was destroyed. At that time the church started having services at the school and it continued to meet there after the school was closed. The building served as the North Deep Red Baptist Church until sometime in the 1960s.

It was moved to its current site in Frederick and restored in 1977.

NOTE: Information in this column was provided by Mrs. Frances Goodknight.

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Joe Wynn is a member of the Tillman County Historical Society’s board of directors. He can be contacted by e-mail at jawynn@cableone.net.