School Days Recollections

Carolann (Frank) Annino entered the one-room schoolhouse once known as the Lane School in 1945. You just may pass by Lane daily, as it is now the VFW on Route 81 (with additions since). She didn’t walk to and from school uphill both ways as I thought she’d say. Instead, an uncle with a station wagon was enlisted.

“There would be about six of us in the station wagon and off we’d go,” Annino said. 

Annino’s class was small – three in her grade including herself, and Lane comprised first through eighth grades. The number of children in each of the schools in Killingworth depended on where the school was located and how many lived nearby. Originally there were eight schools in town.

“There were three when I started in first grade and the same three went all through high school together,” she said. There were no nursery school or kindergarten options – not even play dates!

“We were farmers, we worked. If we got together it was summertime and we got together haying or we had chores to do. We had no play dates but did get together in the wintertime for sledding (there were really no cars then).” 

Annino did, however, know her classmates before she entered first grade, but only because her mother was involved with a ladies group through the Congregational Church, and the women would get together with their kids in tow.

She recalls, “In the wintertime we had hot lunches because the mothers would bring in a big pot of soup and put it on the stove and we’d all have hot soup for lunch. It was the best corn chowder I’ve ever had!”

“Phys Ed was just playing outside, and art was drawing pictures when you had nothing else to do,” she said. 

One-room schoolhouses were used until 1949, at which time Annino moved into a three-room school. She said of the former: “It was wonderful and I wish everyone could have the opportunity because we spent every day with the same group – we were like a family. To this day there are bonds. We were like brothers and sisters.” She added, “the older ones took care of the younger ones and when we went out to play they’d put our coats on for us. And, the older ones would help teaching too – reading and things like that. You pick up things from the older ones, too. The second-graders would be reading and you’d pick up something that you wouldn’t have otherwise if you weren’t in one room.”

When it was time for high school, she went to Hand in Madison. Students were given the choice of where to attend, but “pretty much you had to get your own transportation.” Some went to Chester, some to Durham, and some to Middletown. 

“It was a very simple life and it was great,” she said.  Simple is right – they didn’t even have paper towels! Students brought in their own towels (Annino’s had her name embroidered on it) and their own cup. Even water had to be brought in.

“One of the local students would carry the water in from home and put it in a crock and that was our drinking water. We had outhouses; we didn’t have a bathroom.”

A student would have the same teacher for as long as he/she wanted to teach.

“We had a teacher who went with us to KES when we were transferred there. In fact, it was traumatic to us when we went there because we had Mrs. Cole for so long and she was given the first and second grade at the new school – the new three-room school – and we were in seventh grade. We missed her so much that at recess time we wouldn’t go outside – we’d go to her room. “ 

Snow days may not have even existed. She explains, “I don’t think we had snow days; you’d just stay home if it was too bad. I don’t even remember a snow day. Maybe Marty Machold [a classmate and still a Killingworth resident] remembers one.” 

And those classmates? Interestingly, they all raised their families in Killingworth.

“We have a network. We have a group that’s still here and there’s kind of that underlying bond.” 

Annino also recalled putting on a play at the Old Town Hall each Christmas. When she attended school, only five of the eight schools were used. Students would practice in their own schools and, on the day of the play, they would put everything together. 

“This was the only time we ever interacted with kids from another part of town unless we were related,” she said. 

When her daughter (now in her 50s) was five, she and others petitioned for a kindergarten. “It was denied and denied and denied and finally passed, but we had to do our own transportation because they couldn’t afford to run buses in the middle of the day.”

Annino doesn’t have any personal photos of starting school, although photos have been taken. “We didn’t have cameras. My mother had a box Brownie camera but it was too expensive to have pictures developed. We didn’t have money for that because there was a war going on,” she explains. 

While kids may have had more chores and less money and times were tougher, she still says,  “It was an experience that I wish every child could have."

Classmate Marty Machold recalls, "I'm sure the kids don't do it now, but we always got a new pencil box. It was exciting to us in those days and I can remember it well."

"The boxes had a drawer in them, an eraser and crayons, and two or three pencils," he said adding, "I don't think anyone under 50 years old remembers a pencil box."

"We went to Woolworth's or a five-and-dime store in Middletown because we had nothing around here, and going to Middletown was a big treat," Machold said.

"We had lunch boxes, absolutely. I remember one distinctly; it was a Hopalong Cassidy. I wish I had it today because it would be worth something."

Machold said, "The main thing we got was a pair of shoes. I don't remember in grammar school whether we had sneakers, but they wouldn't be what they are today -- they'd be made of canvas or something."

He walked to Lane School for the first year. By second grade, he traveled by station wagon. "That was the bus that picked us up, and when the big school opened, we went on a schoolbus." 

Machold attended Hand High, but there was only one bus so those who wanted to play sports had to find their way home. 

"I'd hitchhike home. In the old days, everybody knew everybody."

First Selectman Cathy Iino reminisced about her elementary school days at P.S. 165 in Manhattan, saying that they "could not have been more different from KES."

"For one thing, there must have been 2,000 students -- about ten classes per grade with thirty students a piece. My own class was as diverse as could be," she said and added, "I fondly remember a classmate who had escaped from Cuba; he played the saxophone, and every time he brought it in for show-and-tell, we wanted him to play our favorite one of the melodies he knew: Hatikvah, the Israeli National Anthem. Only years later did this strike me as funny."

The First Selectman added, "I myself am one-half Asian, but thought nothing of being cast as a Norwegian girl in a school skit. The only people I knew whose grandparents were born in this country were African-American kids. In spite of the large classes and the run-down building, it was a great school. In Killingworth, we have to work extra hard to make sure our students are aware of the diversity of races, religions, and origins in the world outside our small town. On the other hand, our kids grow up knowing that there are more than a handful of stars visible in the night sky!"

Head Librarian Tammy Eustis, who today still looks much like her kindergarten picture (posted) in 1975, remembers bringing along her plastic poodle bank to the first day (it's in the red bag in the photo) "as a combo show-and-tell and comfort item." Eustis adds, "My favorite part of back-to-school preparation was picking out a lunch box, and my favorite subject was - of course - reading!"

Some of us can't recall our return to school, or perhaps have repressed thoughts. Ironically, Municipal Historian Tom Lentz admitted, "I don't remember a thing about going back to school. It was in Ohio, anyway." Nonetheless, Lentz shared photos of Killingworth schools in the good old days.