School Story:
I feel so lucky to be one of the "Dorset Kids"
The first year I attended there it was only 2 rooms, 6 grades and 6 rows in each. Then the third room was added downstairs, Mrs. Reschs' kindergarten. Also at that period in time the older kids got to attend PR Junior High in 7th grade, so we were K-6.
Boy, did that Park Rapids Junior/Senior High School seem large and intimidating! 2 stories, many different teachers. It also opened up a whole new world for me. We had a gym, basketball games, ice skating in winter, older students and athletes to look up to. For some reason I always remember that Mr. Bergman, my art teacher, also the shop teacher, drove an Edsell, the only one I had ever seen. I think of him every time I go to a classic auto show and see an occasional Edsell. In 7th grade I met and became good friends with Judy Olson and stayed overnight with her in town once in a while. Exciting for a country kid. And she came home with me on the bus , fun for a city kid. She even went with me once on the bus way out to the Ponsford prairie to stay overnight with my grandparents, the Swensons.
I could walk to Mrs. Longs for piano lessons after school and catch a ride home with my Mom when she got off work at the courthouse. I could spend my lunch money and get a coke and hot dog at Schmiders, then go next door to the bakery and buy 2 maple long johns for a nickel.
DORSET STORIES: we were a close group there, something really special. We learned, fortunate to have had great teachers, had fun, played lots of softball, dodgeball, had a Maypole. We had a swing set that you could swing so high on that the air almost seemed thin!
First day of school, first grade, no kindergarten then. Bernard Larsen was so shy and frightened being away from home that he hid out under the library table. Miss Paulsen couldn't get him to come out and well into the school day he was still there! Finally I thought I would try and after lots of coaxing he finally came out and I got him to his desk. Our 3rd grade teacher, Frances Lof liked me a lot so she named her first born Connie. Imagine that!
Mrs. Nelson was our cook and we had wonderful food. She loved children and loved to cook and we could almost always get seconds if we wanted. Mr. Nelson was our bus driver. He became agitated easily and of course we took advantage of that, standing up, changing seats and throwing spitwads. He would get red faced, sort of just puff up, start yanking on the steering wheel and bounce up and down. I suppose he had high blood pressure. Then he would stop the bus until we promised to be good. The bus was really old and on the dry gravel roads the dust would just cloud up through holes in the floor choking us. The Nelson children were Robert, Marilyn and Johnny.
I don't remember for sure but probably in 3rd or 4th grade we had a freak blizzard in May. We were released from school early. The snow fell rapidly and the north wind blew huge drifts across the road. The bus got stuck! I remember some of us getting out to try and push. Lucky for us Donnie Buerkleys farm was close by and his father came to our rescue. He drove across the snow drifts with his team of horses and a wagon. He had installed runners on the wagon for winter so it was actually a giant sleigh and he took every one of us home safely. The memorable part of this experience was that he used the wagon to haul manure from the barn out to the fields! But we were just glad for the ride and it seemed pretty exciting. I don't know how they got the bus out but I imagine Mr. Buerkley went back with the team.
Our 6th grade teacher Olive McDonald got flustered easily and we really took advantage of that too. One day John Hanson locked her in the hall closet and we just went outside to play. I wonder now how long she was actually in there.
Towards the end of the year in the spring she took us on a picnic in the woods behind the school. Very pretty there, a pond at the bottom of the hill, a nature walk we were told. In all our wisdom John Hanson and I decided we would try smoking cigarettes that day. I knew where my Dad kept his Lucky Strikes and John had matches. Wallace Erickson and Suzanne Vogtman were eager to experience the adventure also. We planned our strategy, and at just the right time we separated from the group and the four of us tried smoking! Lucky Strikes were really strong....that didn't last very long! Unfortunately John dropped a match and we started a fairly good sized fire. We just couldn't put it out and the fire department came out from Park Rapids. But it gets worse...we burned a half acre of so of Herman Sitz's prize Christmas trees! Wallace and Suzanne got off easily, but John and I had to pay for the lost trees, $60 each. I worked very hard all summer trapping gophers on our farm to earn the money. I don't really know how John got his money but I suspect his grandfather Harvey Larsen took care of it for him. Poor John, rest his troubled soul. My sister Judy says she remembers standing at the classroom window watching the fire. Her teacher said, "Don't jump!"....like she would!... the fire was in the woods, not the schoolhouse.
Betty Sudbury was a Dorset kid, one year ahead of me. We had lots of fun. Her parents owned Chateau Paulette, the dinner club and resort north of Dorset. Now called Zorbas. We played in the ice house in summer. The ice house was a tall building, about 2 stories, filled with sawdust and ice blocks. The blocks were cut from the frozen lake in winter and stayed frozen packed in sawdust all year. Every day in the summer a worker brought one large block in, chipped it into small bits and that was the ice they used for drinks. They closed the resort for winter but the Sudburys lived in the back so were there all year. That gave us the opportunity to roller skate around the huge fireplace in the center of the dance floor, even though it was unheated and very cold. When we got caught skating by Mr. Sudbury it was big trouble though! Roller skates are not good for a nice wooden dance floor. Good times then. Great memories!
