Jenk Stephenson
I started elementry school at McAdoo in August of 1952--I was almost 7 years old--actually, 6 years and 10 months old. The previous year I would have been 5 years and 10 months old and not allowed to start because I was not six years old by September 1. We lived on a farm outside of town and I rode a school bus to and from school each day. We were a very poor family. The first and second grades were in the same room and taught by the same teacher. We had no school library.
During my six years in McAdoo, we moved to Snyder, Seadrift, Port Lavaca, and back to McAdoo each time. My father needed to work so he moved away to find a job and then returned to the farm to try for a new crop. I was an outsider in school among my friends. We had little to no money. Buying a workbook for 65 cents was often an impossibility and certainnly late in paying for it. I often wore cardboard in the bottom of my schoes because they had holes in them and we could not afford a new pair. Not good for rainy days and the cardboard would get wet and soak into my sock. Lunch time was especially different for me, for a student could not eat in the lunch room without buying lunch there and I certainly could not afford to do that. I often took my lunch and had to eat outside on the steps of the auditorium until the rest of the students came out of the lunchroom. I was not allowed to take a "sack" lunch into the school lunchroom. Some days we had no lunch to take from home so I would somtimes get a nickel to walk to the only store in town and buy something for those five cents. Sometimes I would save my nickle and wait until I had another nickel to purchase a dime's worth from the store for my lunch. About 10 minutes before the end of lunch the school would sell small milk cartons for three cents. Ocassionally, I would skip my nickel lunch and buy the carton of milk, leaving me with 2 cents in change. Save it for another day.
At McAdoo our home was a simple four room house--two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. One of the bedrooms was often used to raise baby chicks that my dad would order and we raised them there until they were large enough to be turned outside. The baby chicks would be delivered by the mailman. When they were larger they could be turned out on the farm and later we would kill them and put them in a butaine powered deepfreezer for food--we had no electricity. We had no indoor plumbing because we had no indoor water. We used an outhouse for a bathroom that was located near the barn. At night if we needed to go to the bathroom we used a 5-gallon bucket and then take it out in the morning. Heat in the house was a propane stove in each room and then turned out at night. During the night we had no heat at all--only the covers on the bed. In the morning we would relight the propane stoves for heat during the day.
One of my early jobs was to go to the windmill and bring water into the house. We had a 55 gallon galvanized water barrel to collect water for drinking and other uses. Each morning I would go the well and dip the bucket into the barrel and bring it back to the kitchen for my mother to use. We all used the same dipper to to dip into the bucket for drinking the water. In the winter time the water barrel would often be frozen and we had an ax for me to use to break the ice with and then dip the bucket into the barrel to carry water into the house. The water bucket would only hold about 2 gallons of water, so being the oldest child I often made many trips to the well for water.
We never had electricity in this home and I often had to do my school homework laying on the floor with only an oil lamp for light. So for all of the 6 years at McAdoo Elementry School an oil lamp was our only lighting at night.
In March of 1958, sixth grade, my dad sold the farm and we never lived there again as a family. I did return for three summers to work for free driving tractors and chopping cotton during those summers for my uncle.
Schools I attended.
McAdoo
Snyder
Seadrift
Port Lavaca
K-Carter Elementry
Hutchistion
Monterey
Spur
Aspermont
Paducah