Kensett #4 ca 1954

If you attended a rural school, this photo probably has a ring of familiarity.  Marsha Gaarder Hasseler sent it along as a grade school memory for the Reunion.  Here's her description:

This is probably not what you want, but it is the easiest one for me to find. I sent it to some Kensett # 4 friends after Dick Brunsvold gave me a copy four years ago when Bob and I had visited him and Gerd at their home at Torpo.
The photo includes the students and families at the end of year picnic. I guessed it to be 1954 and could err.
Karen Okland is just right of center in horizontal stripes.
Dick Brunsvold is on the left, the "tall" slender guy.
Ron VanSteenburg is mostly hidden on the right side of photo. He is standing beside Norma Berge. She was our teacher for grades 4,5,6. And she continued the following year as the school remained open, but we four had been transferred to town.
I am at the center bottom, faded.
Karen, Dick and I had six weeks of spring kindergarten, then went to first grade in the fall. In fourth grade the VanSteenburg family moved to our area, and Ron joined us, making us the "largest" class.

Marsha, that's exactly what I was looking for, and thanks for forwarding it. Perhaps it will prompt others to find and forward similar pictures.  These township schools were quite popular, probably very inexpensive to operate since children would have walked to them and only one teacher had to be paid, and phased out about the time we were in grade school.

My own experience was a 6-week stint at the Grove Township School, later used by the church for Vacation Bible School and ultimately torn down.  It formed many memories for those who attended for any period of time, and was a social center for the farming community, much like the Grange in earlier times.

If you look at the class history that is reported in this blog (at least for the Northwood kids - Kensett kind of got left out of that document) you will notice new classmates coming in from time to time as the rural schools shifted to the "metropolitan" flavor.  I recall Duane Mielke once saying it was tough to be in school in town because if somebody hit you in the stomach you just could not get your breath.  It's too closed in.

He was probably right.  Marsha, thanks for the memory.