Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1915
When we began school the teacher was a normal, gentle young woman. It may have been quite early in her teaching career. Anyway she did well to stick it out nearly two weeks with that tough crowd of mountaineers. I believe the straw that broke the camel's back was when one of the older boys got up and presented his bare backside to her. Anyway, school was shut down for a couple of days, and when it opened we found we had a schoolmaster, Mr. Peck, who was able and eager to handle any situation that came up. I think he was a good teacher and certainly everything quieted down after he took over. The tops of all the desks had been whittled with penknives for many years into all sorts of interesting patterns besides initials. Mine had a great irregular gouge clear across it, and a lot of lesser grooves going off of it. It looked to me like the Mississippi River with all its many tributaries. One of the things I did during the hours when the teacher was occupied with the other seven grades was to push a shotgun pellet along these grooves imagining that the little ball of lead was a boat going up and down the rivers.
I had a very hard time with those mountain schoolmates. Being an outsider I was never fully accepted by them and had to be constantly defending myself or be fast enough to get away. The threats they made against me were appalling to a boy my age. The walk through forest and pasture to school was usually the pleasantest part of the day. The mountain scenery was fine, and the five or six children who ere our companions weren't the bad ones. In the all there were certain chestnut trees and hickorynut trees along the way, and we always stopped to gather the nuts that had fallen since we last passed by. At one place along the route was a very large paper-hornet's nest. Here we let the girls go past a little way, then we boys gathered the best throwable rocks and, holding the reserve ammunition in our left hand and a ready rock in our right, we crept up as close as we dared and let go with rapid fire until the split-second came to run like the devil or be stung to death. The girls, who had been watching from their vantage point, started running the same time we did, but even so they sometimes go stung also as the bees got angrier and sallied out further and further from the nest. In spring there were wild strawberries and dewberries (a kind of low-growing blackberry) to eat.
One of the very satisfactory things that happened at school that term was that I was chosen to decorate a blackboard at Christmas time, as I seemed to be the only kid in the school who could draw a recognizable Santa Claus. For Christmas, each child in the school was given an orange to take home. I never knew whether it was a present from the teacher or the school board. That night I had my orange beside my plate at supper and was gloating over it, I suppose. Anyway, Herbert and Donald were begging for part of it and I said, "I earned it and I'm going to eat it." When I wasn't looking father stealthily reached over and popped it from its spot to a cross piece under the table top. To me it was as if the orange had disappeared into thin air. I remember being very angry and very mystified at the same time. It wasn't until some time later that I discovered it and figured out what had happened. Of course there were many "It serves you rights" in the meantime. The only time Mr. Peck used the switch on me it was unjustified and I was very bitter about it. This is how it happened. The girls' privy was always considered to be a good target at which to throw acorns and the boys often pelted it, but I always thought this a little beyond the pale. Nevertheless, one day a girl told the teacher that I had done so and he just called me in and gave me a good switching for something I hadn't done. My protests weren't even listened to.