Ramsey County History – Spring 1966: “Box Stoves, Cipher-Downs, Sleigh Rides: Memories of a Rural School”

Box Stoves, Cipher-Downs, Sleigh Rides: Memories of a Rural School
Author: Frank Paskewitz

Frank Paskewitz, a member of the Ramsey County Historical Society Board of Directors, attended a one-room school in Todd County in the first decade of the twentieth century. He recalls that school in detail—its appearance, the wood stove, traveling to and from by sleigh, lunches carried in old sorghum buckets, writing on slates, cipher-down competitions, and swimming in the nearby creek at lunchtime. “The one-room rural school is passing from the American scene, but it is leaving behind it memories of a more simple, less complex and, as I remember it, a happier way of life.”
PDF of Paskewitz article