Our Trip to Warren Haven

By Amy

The schoolhouse project group, Jack, Rachel, Mathew, Lynn, and I visited Warren Haven, a local nursing home on March 14^th, 2006. We interviewed some of the residents who had been to schoolhouses including Alice Petty, who just turned 100. Alice had a particularly interesting story to tell us. It included herself, an inkwell, and a boy named Wilmer:

She was doing math one day when she felt something cold and wet crawling across her head. Naturally, she screamed. Wilmer, sitting in the desk behind her, was dipping her curls in his inkwell.

The teacher came over and asked what was wrong. Wilmer laughed and said: "Oh, she's just fooling!"

"No," said their teacher, "if anyone's fooling, you are." She slapped his hands with a ruler. "Let that be a lesson to you!" she intoned.

But Wilmer had different ideas. He knocked the teacher down. She got up quickly and threw Wilmer to the floor, and he didn't get up.

There were other interesting facts, like the fact that mothers sometimes sewed clothes onto their children during winter. Boy, did they probably smell when they got out!

We had a lot of fun at Warren Haven, and we hope to return.