Growing Up in North Dakota

too – in the spring when the snow was melting, the ground became VERY muddy. I’d cut across several yards, as there were no fences separating people’s property, to get to my friend’s house and I got stuck in the mud of someone’s vegetable garden. I remember crying out for help as the suction was such that I couldn’t move. Someone came to help me and I became free – must have really scared me.

The school again was just down the street from our house – it was a big two story brick building that housed grades one through twelve, as did all the schools I attended in North Dakota.

The 3rd and 4th grade class shared one room, my class had maybe ten kids in it, the class below me only three. I remember there was one girl in the lower grade who didn’t say one word all year long. Our classroom had the old fashioned wooden desks that were connected to each other, with the ink wells (though we didn’t use those), a cloakroom and a long sink just outside the door. One of the things that our teacher did daily was to check to see whether or not our fingernails were clean. Can you imagine? I remember her name was Mrs. Morrison, though she’d just been married and her maiden name was Bjornstad.