I’ve Danced My Life Away

I Was Always Fixing Eyebrows and Skinned Knees

I went to the Elm Street School. My mother went to the Elm Street School, and all my three sisters went there. When my mother went there, Mr. Wilbur was the school teacher there or the principal or something. They called him "Pick." She went to him, anyway, and I think my older sisters went there as far as the ninth grade. They all went through the ninth grade and then later when I was teaching they abolished the term "ninth" and they had "freshman" and "senior." I don’t remember when the Camden High School was built. That was before I was born, but my sister Celia graduated from there in 1916.

Ellen Dyer: You would have started Elm Street School about 1913 then?
Frances Schipper: Well, yes, probably. Five years, yeah. I went through the sixth grade there, and by that time they were having the seventh grade up at the high school, seventh and eighth grade at the high school, and then I went to Camden High School.

I went to Farmington Normal School and came home. Mr. Charles Lord was superintendent then, and he went to my father and asked him if I had a position yet, that he wanted to hire me because there was an opening up at the brick school then, the Mary Taylor School. So I taught one year up there, and the rest of the time I guess Doris Frye or somebody had retired or gone on a vacation, and the third grade down at the Elm Street School was available. That was the grade that I wanted to teach anyway, so I was there for 9 years!

ED: Do you remember the other teachers you were working with?
FS: Oh yes. Dorothy Walsh was doing kindergarten. Louise Dyer was first grade, Minnie Oliver was the second grade, I was the third, Lucine Arau was the fourth. Who was fifth?
Barbara Dyer: Nettie Knight.
FS: She was principal. Nettie Knight was principal.
BD: Yes, fifth grade and principal. Ethel Staples was sixth.

I started at 8:15 and we went until 3:15. We didn’t have a play yard then. The kids used to go out and bat each other around and fight and play games. I was always fixing eyebrows and skinned knees. They didn’t have any equipment there at that time; that came after I moved away from Camden. I think at one time they had a swing from one of the trees, and they used to fight over that, but they played and they ran around and hit each other - had a good time anyway. We used to have to take turns being on the playground at recess time. We had a recess in the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon. It was pretty cold standing out there sometimes!