I entered this world assisted by Dr. Isaac Irish, the local doctor, and Mrs. Annie Beals (Malier) a neighbor, in a farm house two and one half miles from the center of the little town of Bowdoinham in the early l900s. Needless to say things were much different back then. My mother was young and I was the first child so she tried any remedy that was suggested for me as I was one of those cry babies. She said I cried for the first six months of my life. Maybe I had a reason. One of the cures for my stomach that she tried was to scrape some of the soot from the underside of the woodstove cover into a dish, pour hot water on it, and let the soot settle to the bottom and give me the water to drink. I survived and in a few short years it was time I entered school to learn the art of reading and writing and to get an education.
At one time in Bowdoinham as in other towns there was a country school at nearly every four corners. There wasn't any near enough to my home so I was sent to the Old Primary School on School Street over town and the way to get there was by the school team, driven by our next door neighbor, Mrs. Amanda Hall. She used a three seated wagon during the fall and spring and a three seated pung for winter, both open to the weather. These vehicles were pulled by Old Tom who must have been in his twenties, certainly beyond the prime of life. When she wanted him to go faster, she gave him a poke with a goad stick which only caused him to switch his tail and keep on at his same slow pace. My mother wanted to spare me the cold winter rides during my tender years as long as she could so waited to enroll me in the spring. Imagine a teacher today taking in a child who had not gone to school at all to enter at the start of the spring term! But Miss Hattie 0. Andros was equal to the challenge. I can still see the neatly written letters of the alphabet across the top of the blackboard and learning A a is what the baby says, E e is what the deaf lady says, and S s is what the snake says, etc. It must have worked for I learned to read from the Primer that had these beginning sentences I still remember&emdash;"I see you. You see me." I can also remember the older children spelling their words out loud in syllables as "sometime s-o-m-e- some t-i-m-e time sometime." The word that has stayed with me was one my older cousin spelled&emdash;"Mustard." The Primary Building contained all eight grades. It was divided into two rooms with Miss Lottie Cobb as the other teacher. Of course there was no indoor plumbing but we did have a vine covered walkway to the out buildings which were situated a short distance from the school house down toward the railroad tracks. I don't remember of having any drinking water at the school and no way to wash our hands before eating our lunches we had brought from home. In 1911 the Coombs School was built and dedicated in 1912. The dedication ceremonies were held in the Town Hall. I can remember how we pupils all marched in by twos but that is all that seemed to impress me. (There is more about it in Silas Adams' History of the Town of Bowdoinham, pp. 255-258.)
When the new school was opened the older children went up there and Miss Andros continued in the old Primary building with the first and second grades. The old high school building was torn down when the new one was ready. I remember going as far as the entry one time with a classmate of mine who wanted to see her older sister.
I was in the fourth grade when I started at the Coombs School. Miss Bryant from Richmond was the teacher. Near the close of the school for the summer she suggested to my mother that I skip the fifth grade and enter the sixth in the fall. My mother had had me wait for my brother who was two years younger so that we could start in September in the first grade together so that made me older than my classmates. I made it, but I was never too good in fractions, as they were taught in the fifth grade. It wasn't until I started teaching school that I learned all the intricacies of common denominators and inverting the divisor when you divide and all the rest.
Then in 1914 came another change. The Bishop School was built and school began in January the winter term. This ended transportation for me as this school was in walking distance. At the same time the Lancaster School was closed and those children brought to the Bishop. How well I remember that first day! The Lancaster Pupils, some twelve of them lined up on one side of the room and my brother Lawrence, Thelma Pratt and me the only ones from the Village School on the other side and stared at each other. It wasn't long before we were all acquainted. Our new teacher was Miss Martha Roberts of Saco, Maine. I finished my eighth grade there with several more teachers, during those two and a half years, as we were quite a group to handle, so it was rumored. It must have been those from the Lancaster School as we were only three in number from the Village. To be honest we did have additions over the next few years.
So in the fall of 1916 it was back to the Coombs Building as a Freshman. When you reached high school years there was no transportation furnished. You got there the best way you could. I walked those two and a half miles many a day during those four years. Once in a while a kind neighbor would come along and give me a lift. No automobiles were used after snow came and it was late in the spring before the mud dried up enough so one could drive over the roads. No tarred roads. The night my class had our "Junior Declamations" as it was called then (every junior class was required to have a speaking contest some time in May), my father took the family over in the car. On the way home we got stuck fast in the mud in the piece of road that is north of where Ralph Purington lives now. My father and older brother trudged home, got the horses, and pulled the car out. The rest of us went back to my aunt's for the night. One winter after my brother was in high too, we would take our old dappled gray horse named Jack, fasten him to the sleigh, and drive down to the road by what is now the Historical Building, turn him around, fasten the reins to his harness and send him back home. That worked real well for a while, but so many stopped him thinking he had run away that he got so when he saw anyone stop his team up ahead in the road, he would stop, too. That meant the driver of the other team would have to walk down to where he was and lead him by his team. We started out as some forty freshmen, one of the largest classes of Coombs High, but we graduated four years later with just ten. Some of the boys left to go to work in the Fertilizer Factory or elsewhere as this was during World War I and good money was to be had. Quite a few of the class members moved on with their parents as work was more plentiful else where, too. One of my outstanding high school teachers was a Bowdoinham lady, Miss Mary Hall. You just didn't put anything over on her. She taught until she was in her seventies, the last years at the Brunswick High. My son went to her as well as an aunt before me.
Our class put on one play in our senior year. We were so successful and confident that we gave the play again this time in the old Opera House in Richmond. We felt very pleased with ourselves even though no one chose the theater as his profession.
In due time I graduated with my nine classmates, six boys and three girls. As I look back on that day, it was one of those times when we were all so nervous saying our "master pieces" we had written, some of us being prompted, a baby crying loudly as he was not too interested, and all this followed by the grand finale Jay Nelson and his orchestra playing the "End of A Perfect Day." We had our big reception and dance that evening lasting until midnight and then we were officially on our own in the big world of work. Evidently none of my teachers ever thought I would become a school teacher because whenever some one was needed to help out in the lower grades, one of the other girls was chosen. None of them ever taught and I made it my life's work. I just don't know how or why I chose teaching unless it was because my grandmother and two aunts had been and were school teachers. Maybe it was in my blood.
Anyway I was hired by the town of Bowdoinham to teach that September at the Ridge School. It has since burned down but it was near the Ridge Church and on the other side of the road. I often wonder what I could have taught those youngsters as I was just fresh out of high school and only a few years older than some of the eighth graders. There were no disciplinary problems and a very cooperative group. Although it was about two miles as the crow flies from my home to the school, in order to get there by car you had to go almost into Bowdoinham Village and turn to the right and on up the Ridge Road the same as now. At that time there was a small bridge over the Stream on a crossroad that connected the White and Ridge Roads. It was safe enough for a team but not for cars. How well I remember that first Monday morning! My father stowed my suit case in the rear seat of the Model T touring car and I climbed into the front seat beside him clutching a few pencils, pens, and the bottle of ink. There were no throw-away Bics then. The fountain pen was filled from the ink bottle. Imagine boarding that near to home! My first boarding place was with Mr. and Mrs. Marshall White paying them four dollars a week. My pay was fourteen dollars per week or the whole sum of $504.00 per year. It stretched much farther than today. The Whites also boarded the men who built the tomb for the Ridge Cemetery so I know how old that is. As I've already said cars were not used in the winter so when that came someone would take me over Sunday evenings with the old horse and Friday after school I could get a ride in the school team to the White Road and then walk the two miles or so home. In the spring one eighth grade boy, Stanley Peva, wrote a play which was put on by the school children along with recitations at the Ridge Church Parsonage which was in existence then and not lived in at that time. They also sold home made ice cream which helped to fill the coffers of our School Improvement League Treasury.
During that winter I took the State examination for a teacher's certificate at the superintendent's home in Richmond. At that time Bowdoinham and Richmond were under the same superintendent. Having passed that, I received a certificate to teach in Maine which had to be renewed every two years. The last time I sent it in in about 1933 I received one of those much disliked later, a LIFE CERTIFICATE. Through the ensuing years I went to summer schools at Gorham and one summer at Bates College. Also to classes that were held in Brunswick given by the Boston University and the State of Maine University. So I did gain in knowledge and the ways of teaching.
After a year at the Ridge I spent the next two years at the Post Road School. It has now become a house. That was during the time or just after the new road was built. We thought that was some super highway. I still boarded during the week. One of my special boarding places was with the Millays. First with Mr. and Mrs. James Millay and then with Mr. and Mrs. Horace Millay. I can see and almost taste those delicious meals. Here again I had very cooperative youngsters and parents. The last year I taught at the Post Road school I boarded about two miles from the school house. During-the winter I often got rides with a couple of older brothers of the children as they were taking them. One of them drove a pair of mules. I received some ribbing from my brother about that. I was boarding with the Leightons at the time. He was quite a bit older than his wife and loved to tell stories about the old days. Usually after one of them he would look at me and say, "Don't you remember that?" His wife would reply, "Now Pardy (that was her pet name for him) you know she wasn't born." I can sympathize with him now when I talk to young folks and forget about the time. I was talking about the Revolutionary War with one of my grades and some one asked me if I could remember it. I also snowshoed from my boarding place to the school house where the snow was too deep for the teams to get through. There was so much snow that year I could snowshoe right over the guard rails by the side of the road. No "No School Days" back then.
The following year I stayed home to help my mother who had a new baby brother for us&emdash;Linwood by name. In the spring I was asked by the Postmaster, Frank Jack, if I'd like to work for him at the office. I accepted and I stayed there for a little over a year then the urge to teach struck again. This time I went out of town to the Woodsville School in Falmouth. I stayed there for three years. As one of my references I gave Mr. W. B. Kendall's name. I learned later that he wrote I could milk a cow and that was what got me my job as this was another rural school. No one ever asked me to prove it! On Monday mornings I would take the 7:15 a.m. train from the Bowdoinham station and leave it at Cumberland Center. The folks I boarded with during the week would meet me at the station and take me the four miles or so to the school house. The gentleman had an old Metz for a car. Part of the time he used kerosene either as part of the antifreeze or to run it on. I know it had a rank smell. One time he tried putting apple peelings on the engine to help kill the odor. On Friday afternoons he would take me back to the station and I would come home on the 6 o'clock train.
My next school was at Brown's Corner in Brunswick. The electric cars were running then so Monday mornings I'd still take the 7:15 a.m. train to Bruns wick, walk up town, and take the electric car at the corner of Pleasant and Maine Streets. After a fifteen minute ride I had a two mile walk on the Durham Road. There was another school a mile nearer so I had company part of the way. We would reverse the process on Friday nights and I'd come back on the 6 o'clock train. I did progress to a Model T Ford that spring so then I drove weekends. As the weather improved, I drove each day.
I had another rest from school teaching when I got married and later had a son to care for. I did do some substituting &emdash; one spring term at the Jellerson School, now the Road and Gun Club House, and I substituted in the seventh and eighth grades at the Coombs School another spring term.
In the summer of 1940 the superintendent in town came to see if I wanted to teach at the Bishop School. I couldn't refuse the offer. We had no car so I bought a little 1935 Willys, gathered up my paraphernalia and was back in business again. It was lucky for me I chose the Willys because the years of gas and sugar rationing were upon us and it was very economical to run. (Wish I had it now!) I also was back to $14.00 again. I had received the fabulous sum of $22.00 while in Falmouth.
I taught the next year at the Cathance School in Topsham under the same superintendent and was then asked to go back to Bishop the next year. I spent two more years there. They were all great youngsters.
That was my last teaching in rural schools because in the fall I went back to the Coombs teaching the fifth and sixth grades. It seemed good not to have to prepare lessons for so many different grades but there were so many more papers to check and more children all about the same age to work with. After a year or so there I was asked to take grades seven and eight. After the High-schoolers were transported to Brunswick High, I was given the High School room. We had so much more room to spread out in, it seemed good. At one time I had forty-five pupils in the two grades.
In the fall of 1954 we made the move into the new Community School so I can boast of being the first principal of that new school. Workmen were still hammering and sawing but we soon got used to it and settled down to business.
It gives me great satisfaction to have all of these pleasant memories to look back on and to be able to say that I taught in four of Bowdoinham's rural schools, four of the rooms at the Coombs School and in two at the Community. Bowdoinham has been good to me.
Helen Robinson Hunter&emdash; May 1979