Old Time Day
The Source
Johnny Horton sang, “Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles, and they ran through the bushes where the rabbits wouldn’t go!” Horton’s Battle of New Orleans lyrics were mimicked last week as the Triopia 7th-grade class dressed up on last century’s clothing, packed their lunches in wicker baskets, and headed out into the wild’s of Morgan and Pike counties for a day living the life of their great-great grandparents. Stopping first at the Meredosia Hill Prairie, an authentic slice right out of the times of the buffalo and glacial silt, they climbed the grassy hills with prairie expert Debbie Burrus to take a first-hand look at this piece of ages past. The 22 kids then rolled back down the hills (some literally) and headed toward Dexter school near Perry, Illinois. Dexter is an authentic one-room schoolhouse built at the beginning of the 19th century, and has been lovingly maintained by a group of local friends and past students. Dexter became the hands-on school for the day as the Triopia student plunged into the woods under the tutelage of Ed Anderson to discover what edible plants could be found growing in the September hillsides of Pike County, then returned to the school yard where Triopia teachers Erin Morrow and Joyce Surratt gave them a quick course in games their ancestors might have played. The lunch bell signaled a dash to the school bus to retrieve their baskets of homemade sandwiches, cookies, turkey jerky, chicken legs, and brownies, all consumed out on the Dexter grass, in the authentic last-century school desks, or alongside a neighboring creek. The colorful assortment of overalls, straw hats, and bonnets then headed south for McKee Creek where Anderson showed his young charges how to look for fossils in the creek bed. But fossil finding was a bit down the list for most of the seventh-graders since a chest-deep swimming hold beckoned them and within a few minutes most were wet, down to their drawers. After pouring the water out of their shoes and wringing out their shirts, the group headed toward the Wilson and McCord cemeteries at Perry where the kids did gravestone rubbings in preparation for a writing assignment awaiting them back at Triopia. The class’s final stop was at the artesian well in Chambersburg for a drink of the county’s purest water, then climbed on the bus a bit bruised and scraped, extremely soaked, and smiling ear-to-ear from a day of lessons they’d remember for a long, long time. Ed Anderson, a former Triopia teacher, said, “When kids graduate from Triopia this is one of the days they remember most.”