One Room School House

My elementary school had 7 students, maybe 10 max at any time in the 6 years I went to school on the island.  We had several teachers throughout the course of our South End School and while we were there my father was the Principal.   Mrs. Broughton (?)  or Mrs. Collins was our first teacher.  Peter Hoyt and I were close in age, he was a year older, and we were the first 'pre-school' or kindergarten students which I think Mrs. Gray held for us on the second floor of the Dorm.   My brother Jeff and Peter's brother Harger were the same age and they started first grade together in 1962.  When the Hoyts left for South Africa for a year long research and work assignment for Dr. Hoyt, my brother was the only student in the school. That year he did two years of school in one year and jumped a grade.  From then on he would be two years older age but three years ahead of me in school. Gradually we had other families move to the island and the youngest children of the existing families were old enough to start school and our numbers swelled to 7 students.  Linton's, Pilkeys, Greenes, Henry's, then Pilkeys left, Traganzas came, Schmidts, Marlands and Howard, then Henry's left, and it was the Marlands Greenes, Gallaghers, and . 
Beginnings:
After Mrs. Broughton, we had Ms. Collins.  She also taught us piano after school.  She rode the boat over every day to teach us.  By 1963 we were set up in what is now the MI admin office in the quadrangle  Dr. Lauft, who hired the architect to design the interior space and built-ins for the Shell Hammock houses, hired him to design and furnish the one room school house. We had nice big tables and chairs for the older kids and smaller tables and chairs for the younger ones. Everything was brand new.  High grade polished, glossy wood school furniture, kind of a European or Montessorri look to it. We had a reading corner behind the movable chalk board next to the bookshelf that held the World Book Encyclopedias.  When my family left for Washington D.C. in 1968 for a year when I was going into 5th grade, I had never before sat in what is a typical school desk nor had I ever eaten in a school cafeteria.  I was at a total loss as if I had come from a foreign country and was learning new customs. 
 Josie Hales, the wife of a professor from England taught us after Ms. Collins left.  She was fun, energetic, artistic and we loved her British accent and our tea times in the afternoon (Kool aid and graham crackers).  Our longest running teacher was Mrs. Virginia Sisco.  She was divorced or widowed and chose to live on the island.  I think she lived in one of the trailors near the MI or on the second floor apartment in the Dorm.  We had a more permanant group of kids at this point - Henrys, Greenes, Marlands, Howard, Schmidts with fluctuations as to what family had come over to the island for a year or so, and then left. 

Field trips were to the beach to collect shells to make our Mother's Day gifts, Christmas gifts and other crafts.  We also went there to observe a solar eclipse, with our specially made protective sunglasses.  The beach was minutes from our school but some how things seemed farther away then they do today.

Recess and PE was held in the quadrangle.  Kick ball was our favorite game as was Red Rover or Red Light Green Light or Simon Says.  We had no playground equipment so the Turkey Fountain may have served as our climbing space and of course we also enjoyed picking up the dark green algal slime that was always prevalent  in the fountain and being simultaneously entertained by it and disgusted by it.  The boys threatened in fun to throw it at the girls.  Another entertainment was picking kumquats off the several citrus trees in the quadrangle and seeing who could hold a straight face while eating it.  The double oak trees across from the school with the wisteria vines connecting them made a great climbing wall for us.  The girls probably jumped rope and we played some kind of game with bamboo poles that several of us would hold and click together near the ground while one girl would jump in the middle between them.  Anyone know what this was called?

Lunch time was when we either rode home with our dads, if they were on the island, or walked home for lunch. When our school was at its peak in numbers we had a split session.  The younger ones came in earlier and left at lunch and the older ones came in mid-morning and left in the afternoon.  Those were the years my mother made me practice the piano in the morning, before going to school, which I disliked with gusto.  It was the metronome that really drove me crazy.  But how many times could I play 'From A Wigwam' and never get tired of it?

Boats

Living on an island accessible only by boat makes you think of the boats you rode like you would family members or best friends.  You depended on them to get you to the other side and back.  And in the twelve years we lived on the island, none of them ever let us down - getting across Doboy Sound that is.  But they each had a personality of their own.  Some were a bit uppity, some were stylishly dependable, some were dowdy and plain and some were like spirited teenagers and wild horses. My favorite boat was the Pegasus.  I really did think of her as a sleek white horse, running across the water, taking us to school and back.  The Striker was the teenager.  Young, speedy and fun.  The Janet was the queen boat, the main one in the fleet whose sole purpose was to transport islanders, visitors and very important guests.  She was the most respected and loved all of the boats.  The Kit Jones was special too. Painted gray and white, always in meticulous condition, the Kit Jones was a nice looking boat.  Although occasionally we would ride the Kit Jones to the mainland, she was the primary research vessel and kids weren't welcome on-board too often, and you certainly couldn't run around and mess with things.  Captain Rouse was a stern captain and kept his boats squared away -- and he didn't  take to warmly to fidgety kids.  If you ride a boat as often as we did, sometimes it was so hard to sit still and just look out of the window at the endless choppy waves hitting the side of the boat.  Porpoises were a fun diversion though and we loved to watch them swim along side us for fun.  The sea gulls were always hanging around the stern seeing what got stirred up by the propeller that they could swoop down upon.

One boat I had a love-hate relationship with was the Tarpon.  She was an old shrimp boat converted to a transportation and research vessel.  We had to take the Tarpon to the mainland when the Janet wasn't in service.  From a child's view she was the country-cousin of the Janet.  The Tarpon was noisy, lumbering, vibrating and smelly with diesel fumes.  The Tarpon was painted gray inside and out, a boat metal gray, maybe with a hint of blue.  When you had to take the Tarpon, instead of the Janet, and you were dressed up to 'go to town', you suddenly didn't feel special anymore, and you hoped that no one off the island would see you get on and off that old boat. But I felt sorry for the Tarpon, I don't know why, maybe because she knew she didn't have as much class as the others, being that she was made to be a work boat for catching shrimp.  She was always docked on the left side at Marsh Landing dock when you approached from the water, certainly not as prominently docked like the Janet, who was always front and center, or the Kit Jones, were.  Almost as if we were embarrassed to have this old, dull looking boat in our fleet.

Although you really wanted to like the Tarpon, to find something likable, a comfortable place to sit wasn't it. She made for a long, boring ride across Doboy Sound.  Everyone had to keep their thoughts to themselves for the duration of the 35 minute ride because the seating area was so near the engine room.  No one could hear you and you couldn't hear them without having to shout.  And your body vibrated the entire time, especially when you tried to talk.  I remember my mom would hold me in her lap and I would put my head to her chest so I could hear the vibrations of her voice as she tried to talk to the other women and mothers on board.

Riding the Janet is a story in itself.  She was our ferry for so many years.  She was the one you strained to get a glimpse of her pink and white colors as you came down the mainland dock road.  If you were returning from a long car trip across several states or just coming back from town and had gotten delayed, everyone in the car would be worried she wasn't going to be there waiting if you got there a minute too late. Seeing the boat captain, Fred Johnson or his brother Cracker, wearing a captain's hat and smoking a cigar at the helm always made your day and you knew everything was going to be okay when you safely made it in time to place your belongings on the back of the boat and to take your seat inside.  Then you would watch Dan pass around the log book and sit back and role himself a cigarette. The Janet is another story indeed.

The Women of Sapelo

Kind, round faces, soft, lyrical voices, outstretched loving arms with nimble, capable hands are some of the images I remember the women of Sapelo by.  I would gaze upon their beautiful, smooth skin of varying shades of brown and black, watch their animated faces with stories to tell  and wise sayings to impart while switching a fan back in forth to dispel the constantly buzzing bugs, heat or both. I never tired of hearing the sweet voices, intently listening to understand their language, their island way of speaking, and wondering why I could always catch more of what the women were saying  than the men of the island. Perhaps it was their softer and slower way of speaking.  The men spoke faster and sometimes their sentences came out like bullets of foreign sounds.

I have never yet again been surrounded by so many mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers and aunts.  Their ways of interacting, of being, and of living were a constant source of fascination and wonder to me.  They did not have a lot of money but what they did have was confidence in their living, and how to live right.  They were strong in every since of the word.  And capable of cooking the best food you have ever wanted to eat. Fried chicken, pork chops with rice and gravy, lima beans, string beans and black eyed peas and making lemonade so perfectly tart and sweet that on a hot summer day it made lunch at the dorm's dining hall the best meal you had ever tasted.  I remember the times the kids were allowed to join the students for a special lunch at the dorm, sitting in the cool air conditioned lunch room watching the students finish off their fried chicken lunch and desert, and wishing I could be an ecology or geology student just to be able to eat dinner at the dorm everyday .  I loved just hanging out in the dorm kitchen where Miss Rosa and Miss Viola worked.  Two more wonderful human beings there never were.  At age 9 I was chest height to them and my memories of hugging them are delightful, feeling nestled in the security of a mother's bosom. And how they liked to laugh and hear our stories and love us.