I went to school some in Burke’s Garden and some in Ceres. The school that I went to was called Burke’s Garden High School or something like that. It was just a single schoolhouse sittin’ right in the middle of Burke’s Gardens. Me and my brother, oh, we’d walk as much as three miles to school. It didn’t matter how bad the weather was, we went to school. The school year started some time in September and finished in May. Our school day started at nine o’clock.

When the first snowflake fell, they had school, they aren’t like they are now. They had school every day, regardless to the weather. When there would come a little frisk of snow, a bunch of us would slip off and go rabbit huntin’. And of course we’d get in trouble for it. We’d maybe have to stay in half an hour after school maybe for two or three weeks for doin’ that, but we did enjoy it. We did a lil rabbit huntin’!

There was a little schoolhouse set up here in Ceres, right along the road. It was a little old one-room schoolhouse. Just an old planked-up sealed-up schoolhouse, and we’d nearly freeze to death in it. We had mostly stood around the stove all day, and we give one boy, Levi Shupe, a quarter a day to come in early and start the fires in the stove. Getting the old schoolhouse warmed up the best he could. My teacher there was Ms. Mamie Neal. This school didn’t have a name cause they didn’t name it.

Me and Davis Pruett went to school together, and I don’t guess that there were any meaner two boys that ever went to school than we were. We’d do everything. We had a little room where we hung our coats and caps, and put our lunch in there. And there wasn’t no heat in there. There was a big ole pond across the road from the schoolhouse. And in the winter, we’d go over there and skate on that pond. Maybe catch some boys goin’ home and we’d get in a fight and throw ‘em in the creeks or something like that, and they’d tell on us. They never got any meaner than we was.

For our punishment, the teacher would send us in that little ole room to freeze. We’d get our coat and cap and our lunchbox, and we’d go out in the winter and go home. She went to lookin’ for us, we wasn’t there. She’d ask us where we were at the next day. We said, “We went home, we got cold.”