It really was two and a half miles to school

Mountain Moments

By Dwight Barnes

(Updated: Wednesday, March 19, 2008, 5:45 PM)

In this day of school buses and door to door service provided by mothers driving the family SUV, it is appropriate to recall how young people went to school three quarters of a century ago.

Back in 1984, Virginia Osborn, a student at Oak Creek Intermediate School in Oakhurst, sat down for a chat with Helen Schneider West, and the result was a prize- winning essay in Sierra Historic Sites Association's annual essay contest about times long ago.

How times have changed.

Helen was 10 years old when in 1923 the family moved from Southern California to a homestead above Oakhurst in the area of today's John West Road.

When her family moved to Oakhurst from Southern California, she was put back a grade from fourth to third because the mountain school, with eight grades in a single room, was so far ahead of larger school she had attended in the southlands.

It was a two and a half mile hike to school, which was located where the community college now is located on the banks of the Fresno River. That building now is the Nathan Sweet Museum at Fresno Flats Historical Park.

"Helen said she was seldom on time for school, as she played on the way." Virginia wrote in explaining the title of her essay, "A Diller, A Dollar, a Ten O'clock Scholar." School started at 9 a.m.

"If she walked, she would kick a pine cone and if it went off the road, she would have to fetch it. Because of Helen's frequent truancy," Virginia went on, "the truant officer came all the way from Madera to see her parents, but that didn't stop her."

Virginia quotes Mrs. West as saying "I was still late. I was the 'ten o'clock scholar.'"

Helen and her brother Frank often rode horses to school where a stable, complete with hay, was provided for students. Virginia's account of life of a child in the 1920s and '30s continued:

"The kids often would ride horses to Bass Lake to picnic or swim. They would cut through the Dupzyk place (high on Crane Valley Road) and come out about where the airport used to be. They would run their horses along the winding dirt road along the lake.

"One day, Helen was crossing an old bridge at a dead run and the horse fell through and she hit her head on a post. The kids propped her up until she came to. Then she spent the rest of the day swimming. Later her parents said that was probably the best thing for her to be in the cold water.

"Now and then, the kids would steal a watermelon from Mr. Forsyth. Occasionally, they would 'rustle' some of the Dupzyk horses to ride when they couldn't catch theirs. The Dupzyk horses were in a corral. They were all good neighbors and took the kid stuff in stride.

"The neighbors would get together to help one another to harvest crops. They women would sometimes quilt or sew and get the meals while the men did the heavy work. Every meeting was a great event for everyone, for they would bring different varieties of food.

"Helen used to earn a dollar for every gunnysack of acorns she could pick up for the Beasores to feed their pigs. That made her feel rich."

Helen recalled smoking grape vine up on the hill behind the church (then at Chapel Hill above Road 425B) and being run off by Mrs. Berdel, who ran the store across the street. When Helen was 16, she tried her older sister's "pink cigarettes." She hated it and never smoked again.

She also recalled riding bundles of lumber down the flume, getting on at Salt Springs, along the Fresno River upstream from the Sierra Ambulance headquarters. They apparently rode to near where the flume passed the school. She mentioned that girls were supposed to be little ladies, wearing dresses to school, a problem for riding a horse, so they wore "riding skirts."

Virginia concluded her essay:

"Helen kicked that pine cone down the trail to arrive at school at ten o'clock until she completed the eighth grade and the Ten O'clock Scholar did not go to school anymore as the high school was too far away."