The Hamlet of Coventry
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1/5/2010
I was born in 1943, my father was training in tank maneuvers in Kentucky, I believe, if I remember everything correctly, and then he went to war in Germany. Before he went overseas he got a short furlough...and mother became pregnant with my brother. Mom took care of my brother and I alone. Coventry, then as is now, was rural, and we children, when of age, attended a small one-room school house, which is still standing. We had one teacher, who taught 4 grades. The facility was heated with an old oak coal stove, and the boys were responsible for keeping it full of coal. The water situation I don't remember, but, I know, there was no plumbing. We used a "three-holer" out back of the school, and in the winter months, the teacher didn't have to worry about our spending too much time in the bathroom. There was an old organ which the teacher had to push the pedals with her feet to get it to play. She played the national anthem, we sang, and saluted the flag, and said a prayer. We children all walked to school. In those days, one didn't have to worry about perverts attaching your children. In the winter months, I remember after taking off our boots, we would take our chairs and sit in a circle around the coal stove with our feet on the silver ring around the stove melting the snowballs off our feet. There were several of these little one-room schools in town of Coventry, but I write only about the one I attended.
The little school had a library, and I remember reading fictional stories of animals dressed in clothes and their escapades, etc. My favorite book was "Mother West Wind's Animal Friends" by Thornton W. Burgess. I'm sure there were other more informative books in the library, but that's what happens when one gives this child an opportunity to pick her own.
We centralized with Afton Central School, in Afton, New York, and most of the children in Coventry were bussed there from 5th grade on. I'm not sure when they closed the little school, however, Coventry has not had a school since. Some of our students go to Greene, some to Harpursville, some to Bainbridge, and some to Oxford.
Although this review was to center on education, I would like change subject and mention that much of the industry in this area, (nearby towns, Coventry has only one industry-type business, that of welding small utility trailers,) forcing many of the young people away to bigger places. Our taxes are some of the worst in the country and recent over-t
Patricia | Bainbridge, NY