A novel childhood

When I mentioned an unusual life recently, I was not joking! I went to small rural one and two room schools through most of my grade school years. Second and third grade I attended a tiny one room school in a little community called Camp Wood, which was about fifty miles on some gravel and dirt roads north and east from Prescott, the county seat of Yavapai County in the geographical middle of the state. I was the only girl among the eight students and my father was my teacher. Before the second year was over, my first brother, the one I now live with, was born. I spent a few months back home in Jerome where we then lived (permanent residence anyway) with my Mom and the new baby since it was risky to take a new-born so far out into the wilderness. I missed the fun out at Camp Wood while that went on but read a lot of books as well as keeping up most of my school work at home. Mom was qualified as a teacher too.

Here is a picture of the school and grounds during that winter to illustrate why Mom and young Charlie didn't come out! Isn't that beautiful but sooo cold looking? I would say there was about eighteen inches of snow on the ground right then. During the week we lived in that little trailer sitting to the right. It was slightly bigger than one of those tiny travel trailers but not much. We had no electricity or running water!

On a milder day, here I am with my classmates who ranged from the first to the eighth grade. I'm the one with the pigtails in the back but otherwise was pretty much just one of the boys. LOL. I am flanked here by two of the Foster boys. The other two are in the front row. The middle row is the three oldes boys, Fred Merritt, Jack Crow and Bill Pehl, seventh and eighth graders. Bill and Jack lived on the nearby Yolo Ranch, another property of the notorious Green Cattle Company and part of the empire of fabled Colonel Green. As I recall, Bill's father was the foreman there. Jack was part Indian and his dad was one of the ranch hands. The Foster boys father worked for the sawmill which was owned and run by Fred's father. That was about all there was out there too! The Merritts also ran the Post Office and a very limited "company store."

We were in the middle of the woods and often saw deer, wild turkeys etc.I had a great time those two years and probably started to get a little bit tomboy and a lot uncivilized. I am not sure if I ever recovered completely or not! I wish I remembered more details about those two years. Mostly only vignettes of highlights remain in my memory.