North Prairie School #4

July 18, 2009

North Prairie School #4 is where Lyle Hendrickson, age 71, went to school from the first to part of the third grade. That was 65 years ago.

Lyle said he walked to school one and a half miles from Aunt Edna’s farm where he lived at the time. We met Edna Solheim at the Trinity Home in Minot -- a delightful, bright and cheerful lady of 99 years of age. We saw Edna’s name on the Stave Church in Minot. She was a donor there. We also saw Edna’s name on the patio which she and her husband sponsored at the welcome center in the Scandanavian Heritage Park in Minot.

We got Lyle to reminisce about his school days here. We were interested because my mother, Dorothy Malay Fischer, taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Houston County MN from 1928 to 1930, after she received her teaching certificate from Moorhead Teacher’s College.

When Lyle went to school here, there were seven children in the whole school -- four in his grade and the remaining three in other grades. He remembers the McGuffy Reader and his teacher, Haddie Deibler, “who was just a big mother hen.” Haddie lived at the closest farm and also walked to school about a half mile each way.

“Haddie would have us writing letters to Santa Claus,” Lyle recalled, “ and one Spring we found those letters in the ditch after a Spring snowmelt.”

“Haddie explained that those letters must have fallen out of Santa’s sleigh after visiting us on Christmas.”

The schoolhouse was heated by a coal furnace. Every morning Haddie would make some cream tomatoe soup which we had for lunch. Those of us who wanted brought a potato wrapped in foil and we stuck those in the coals so they were ready for lunch, Lyle said.

There were no discipline problems. No bullies. No ADD or ADHD. Therefore no ritilin. No special ed. Everyone was treated with respect and treated equally. According to Lyle, North Prairie School #4 was a very happy place. No those were the days.