{AMISH COMMUNITY NEWS} Vol. 4 No. 12
September 12, 2012
September’s Song
by Steven Byler
Autumn Brings Memories By Mrs. Rudy Kathryn Detweiler
I started school at 6 years old in the first grade at Mesopotamia Elementary back in 1948. We lived where Bishop Harvey and Mary Ellen Frey now live on Girdle Road. My parents made me go barefoot and I’ll never forget how bad I felt, the only little Amish girl and having to go barefoot on the school bus. The high school girls made fun of me and stepped on my toes (or pretended to). Later, we moved on the John Shetler farm on Donley Road where Urie, Andy, Anna and Ray Hostetlers live. Then I rode to school in an old kid hack pulled by two horses with our neighbor John Fisher as the driver. I thought this was so much fun even through there was no heat. But we bundled up good. When we got to our three-room school at Hayes Corners, we’d run for the furnace room to warm up. I can still smell that coal fire! Hayes Corner School closed in 1954 when I got out of 6th grade. We were sent to Middlefield to finish 7th and 8th grades. Johnny Smallwood and a Parker boy went hunting and, somehow, Johnny got shot accidentally and died. He was in my grade. (This is how I remember it, but please correct me if this is not right.)
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