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Ilene Moore’s Long Ago School Days
in Otis
Ilene Moore attended a one-room school house just like this one.
This building, the original Beech Hill School, was recently
acquired by the Otis Historical Society. When repaired, the
schoolhouse will serve as a museum for the society. |
When Ilene Moore is
a passenger in a car traveling the roads of Otis, she sometimes
closes her eyes—and can tell her driver where they are.
At least, she could
do that when she was a child.
Moore spent many years on Otis’ roads, starting as a
youngster and going along as her mother, Mathel Bell, drove the
local school bus.
Moore and her
brother, Lester, would play games in the back of the bus. Most of
all they closed their eyes and identified where they were traveling
by the way the bus turned and swayed.
What Moore liked
best about growing up in Otis was the “country living.”
Her home was right
near the one-room schoolhouse that she attended (near the Baptist
church and
Point Road).
It was so close that, Moore remembers, it was more likely for her to
be sent home to use the bathroom, than for her to use the school’s
outhouse.
The school teachers
even boarded at the Bells’ home.
“They stayed in a
room next to mine,” Moore said.
Moore was the only one in her kindergarten class at the
one-room schoolhouse—the name of which she cannot remember.
“They would sit me
next to the wood stove,” she said. “I would be cooking on one side
and freezing on the other.”
Moore remembered fondly the days when lunch breaks were a
full hour, and recess was at least 15 minutes.
A member of Moore’s
family has attended each of the schools in town.
She was part of the
last class taught at the one-room schoolhouse. Her brother was in
the first class when the school was located at the
Civic
Center,
the current location of the town office and library. Her nephew was
in the first class at the current Beech Hill School, built in 1988. |
