Coffins and stick cars

Memories of a school called Lettered Oak

by Ira Griffin Hughes

As a child I attended a two-roomed school called Lettered Oak.

My grandfather told me that the school was named Lettered Oak because Daniel Boone once went through the area and carved his name on an oak tree.

The school had a ball and bat for the kids to play with. There was no playground equipment. But the kids of Lettered Oak were blessed with an abundance of imagination and ingenuity.

There were lots of large trees at the back of the school. One autumn we children of lettered Oak gathered leaves into a pile and formed a coffin. One boy volunteered to be the dearly departed and lay down in the leaves. We covered him with the leaves, leaving only his head to view. A few days earlier a storm had passed through and uprooted a large tree exposing its giant roots clogged with red clay. As we mourners filed around the coffin wailing, one little girl leaped upon the uprooted tree and began preaching the funeral. She paced back and forth on the fallen tree yelling and slapping her hand against her leg mimicking the fire and brimstone preachers of the day. She screamed that if we didn’t change our ways, before we became like the boy in the coffin, we would end up in a fiery pit.

Another very special memory is riding in stick cars.

The year of the stick cars we were about eight or nine, some maybe ten. Boys cut small, forked tree limbs. The limbs were about two feet long, and the forked limbs which were the antennas were about two feet as well. The boys placed theirs hands on the left side of the stick and the girls put their hands on the right side, and away we went, side by side, running all over the schoolyard. The antennas were often adorned with a colorful ribbon or a piece of brightly colored construction paper. My favorite stick car was owned by a boy who had attached a squirrel’s tail to his car’s antenna.

The above are just a couple special memories I have of a school called Lettered Oak.

Ira Griffin Hughes