Remembrance  of Ahloso School
by Joan Oakes Rutter melr@busprod.com

Ahloso School in 1939/40, 41, and 42 was a three-room school house with grades 1 and 2 in one room, grades 3,4, and 5 in another room and grades 6,7, and 8 in the third room. It was heated with coal burning heating stoves in the center of each room. There were no bathrooms, only outside toilets, one for boys and one for girls. Our drinking water was from a cistern. Our school library was a closet about 3'x4' with shelves and about 50 books. I believe they were all fiction. At times we were given one of these books and told to take a couple of pages and write the words down the page (instead of across) and put the parts of speech for each word beside it.

Mr. E. L. Patterson was my teacher all three years in every subject. Mrs. West was the teacher in grades 3, 4, and 5 and lived in a house on the school grounds. She had chickens and they ran all over the school yard.

There were two softball diamonds, one of them served as a basketball court at times and I believe about a half-dozen swings. Lots of empty space and I've seen some long lines for "crack-the-whip."

On Saturday night a few times during those three years, they had a pie-supper or box-supper. The women or girls brought a pie or box-supper and it was bid on by the men and boys. The highest bidder got to eat with the female that brought it.

I lived at what was called the "Ahloso Y" about 2 miles southeast of Ada where highways parted. Ahloso school was about a mile away. We walked to school most of the time on the highway or the railroad tracks. In very cold weather, sometimes a neighbor with a car would take us.

About two years ago we went to the location where Ahloso was, but there is nothing but a field there now. If there is still an Ahloso school, it is located somewhere else.

Joan Oakes Rutter

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