Recollections from generations past (Tennis & Severn Whitehead- 3)

 

Mrs. Tennis Whitehead (1904 - 1991)

Mr. Severn Whitehead ((1905 - 1988)

Interview recorded April, 1982

TRANSCRIPT PORTION

INTERVIEWER:  Where did you say you went to school at?

SEVERN:  Place called Rabbit Knaw.

INTERVIEWER:  Rabbit Knaw?

SEVERN:  Uh huh....

INTERVIEWER:  How far was that from where you lived?

SEVERN:  Where I lived? About 4 miles.

INTERVIEWER:  You had to walk?

SEVERN:  Yeah, you’re dag gone right. Get out there some days and have to walk back in the snow and freezin’ and sleetin’ and stuff. Just about 4 miles we walked to school.

INTERVIEWER:  Was it one teacher that taught everything?

SEVERN:  One teacher taught. And I think there at one time she had right close to 50 head in there. Yes, that one room would be all in the school. It had an old wood stove in there, and that one teacher done it all. That one teacher done it all.

INTERVIEWER:  What did she do for discipline? Like if somebody did something that they weren’t supposed to do? Like for punishment?

SEVERN:  They had to stay in for 2 or 3 well sometimes, she’d keep them in for a week. Every recess, every dinnertime, they’d have to stay in. And then the father he’d take over, and he’d punish them, when he got home. The father would punish him, in those days, they don’t do it no more. You let some child do something in the school and he find it out and he’d punish him. Sometime put a little spankin’ on him or somethin’ like that. Wouldn’t let him go no place for a right small while. And I’ll never forget one of the teacher’s name was, one of the teacher name Cleo Wilgus, and her boyfriend used to come see her there sometime. And it was snowing and raining out there, so while she was out on the outside talking to him, some of them got out and locked her out, and like never got it open while she was standing in the rain. Let’s see, that’s about all the good news I know. In them days, they didn’t have no dancin’ and get togethers and all that kind of stuff. They went to school and they studied. When you went to school 9 o’clock of a mornin’ you stayed there til recess, one little recess mornings had for dinner, and then you went, I think on about 15 minutes for that and then you come, went back to school and stayed til ‘bout 3 something and then you’d have another 15 minutes until 4 o’clock. But no dancin’, they used to all sing and say their prayers and stuff in there of a mornings, but now then they have everything else, but that. There out, it seems like out on the fround more than they are there. You didn’t get a chance to get out. That one teacher had that many children, you know, she had to be right there all the time to them, and they used to have a field day, used, they’d all hook wagons and horses and go from Rabbit Knaw to Stockton. When they all met there and then maybe next year, I think one year they drove from a place called Rabbit Knaw, just below Stockton, they all went in horse and buggy. Up the field, up to Snow Hill for what they call Field Day. Everybody get together and go up there. We used to have them sticks, that run and jump, who would jump the highest, who could run and jump the furthest, stuff like that. But when it come to dances, such stuff as that, there wasn’t nothing like them in them days. Maybe they were too busy teaching. Didn’t get but very little time to play, just maybe 15 minutes, that would be all they’d have for their recess, but when they got in there at 9 o’clock, wasn’t nothing else til dinnertime, eat their lunch and then right back teaching again. And about 3, somewhere in around there, two-thirty, 3 o’clock we gave another little recess, they’d run out and stretch their legs and go back and stay in school til 4. Lot of times we’d stay in school til 4:30, quarter til 5, before she ever got through her work. You know, teaching them all.

INTERVIEWER:  What kind of stuff did she teach you?

SEVERN:  Well from first grade on up to about 8 or 9 grades, I think it was, she had to teach. I think first grade, I think maybe. I know they went to about 8, or rather 7, I mean 9th grade I think in them little schools. That give one teacher all she could tend to.

INTERVIEWER:  What kind of music did you listen to?

SEVERN:  None.

INTERVIEWER:  None?

SEVERN:  No music, no music. Didn’t have no music in to ‘em. All them give you to sing, but there wouldn’t be any music into it.

INTERVIEWER:  Did you ever go to listen to a band or anything?

SEVERN:  No.

INTERVIEWER:  Army band or anything?

SEVERN:  No, no Army band, went nowhere. Schools had nothing like that in them days, no bands. They’d all get together and most of the singing in school in them days was hymns. Most them days would be hymns, would be no cut up stuff in the schools. You’d all sing pretty hymns and all that kind of stuff. There wasn’t no bands or horns or nothing like that in them days. Where I went of. It was mostly good times, the teachers was strict, you had to do what they said to do, didn’t you’d have to stay in, for dinner and sometimes they were real mean. Then they’d go home and then the parents, they’d punish them. Kinda put a little switch around the legs and then, back then, standing on the corner home there, I stood on the corner lot of times, yeah, stood on the corner a lot of times.

(Recollections Past continues with a new interview next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)

Rabbit Knaw is located on Route 12, south of Stockton and about 1 mile north of the Virginia state line. It is approximately the intersection of Big Mill Road and Rabbit Knaw Road. The late Robert (Bob) Barr was perhaps the most famous resident. Bob was the father of Colleen Barr and Connie Barr. Connie married Eddie Plank, a Maryland State Trooper who was murdered just south of Princess Anne on Rt. 13.

Your friend,
Slim