We three Caywood kids walked over 2 miles to school on dirt roads through cold, heat, rain, mud, ice, snow and even blizzard type conditions when I attended my first four years of school. Our little one room country school, Mt View Dist #61, sat on the top of a fairly tall hill and so named because of its location. It was located in far northwestern Grant County OK near the Kansas border..

I was five when I started to primary school (first grade) The next year, Mama gave the new teacher the choice of whether I took the first grade over or send me on to the second grade. Since he would have no other second grade students, he chose letting me stay back. I am sure it was because he would have had an extra class of 1 to teach I was so young when I started, even when I made all A’s. This bothered me for many years, because I was always much older than my age.

I remember several times of having to crawl up the hill on ice to reach the schoolhouse. We grasped for a handhold from the blades of grass that stuck out of the ice. A few times as we almost reached the top, we would slide all of the way back down and have to start all over. It was not enough that we were already cold when we reached the schoolyard, but we were freezing by the time we made it to the top of the hill and into the warmed building.

School was not called off like it is now. My parents did not have a reliable car to take us to school like a few of the others students did. For some reason, we never rode a horse either. In fact, when I attended school at Mt View, no one rode horses. There was an old shed like horse barn for horses on the corner of the schoolyard. It was used when my daddy attended school many years before I did.

Our little school was dissolved in 1941 at the end of my 4th grade. I had five years at this little country school. I enjoyed the close knit relationship of classmates when we attended the little one room school, but I was elated to be bussed ten miles to Gore Consolidated #1 grade and high school also located in Grant County. Great memories!!!