For close to 40 years a group of women who attended Clearwater Grade School #17 in the 1950s have gotten together to catch up and reminisce about their growing up years.
Carol (Hanson) Pribyl and Kay (Mooney) Hinkemeyer started the group in the mid-1970s after Pribyl’s mom, Amy, suggested a reunion.
The group gets together every April and October, and as the years have gone by they’ve gained and lost members. Their last meeting Oct. 19 was their largest, with 14 attendees.
Clearwater Grade School #17, on Bluff Street, was open from 1871 to 1969 and held classes for first through eighth grade. During the time the women attended there were only three sections, first and second grade, third, fourth and fifth, and sixth, seventh and eighth.
Some of its students lived in town, but others, like sisters Gail (Walker) Foss and Linda (Walker) Thole, lived in the country and had a harder time getting to school.
“We rode bikes until it was so cold our hands would freeze,” said Foss. “When we’d get home we’d put our hands in lukewarm water to warm them up. It was only a mile and a half but it seemed a lot longer.”
Kids could come to school early so they could play softball before class. At recess they would form teams to play games like fox and geese. Marbles and a game called steel sticks were also popular.
When it was too cold to go outside, student Joyce Heaton would play records and teach the other students to dance dances like the polka.
Many of the girls were Camp Fire Girls, an organization similar to today’s Girl Scouts. They met weekly at either the school or a parent’s home.
The girls would get patches and little beads for accomplishing activities. Once they had gotten 12 little beads they were given a big bead. Some of them made their own scarves, embroidering the Camp Fire Girls logo, a campfire, onto it.
In the summer the Camp Fire Girls would go to Camp Suima on Warner Lake. They could sleep in old railroad cars with cots in them. There were no sleeping bags, so they would take blankets and pin them together with baby pins to make a bed roll.
The group would occasionally attend larger meetings in St. Cloud as well as attend different events like the Shrine Circus. Hinkemeyer wrote about one of their trips in the Dec. 1953 edition of the school newspaper, Clearwater Ripples.
“We went to St. Cloud and from there to Minneapolis by bus. We went to the Shrine Circus. There were many thrilling acts in the circus. The most thrilling act was when they shot two girls out of a cannon. We all bought balloons and nicknacks [sic] to remember the trip by. We had a lot of fun and liked it very much.”
Every year the school held a Christmas play, and they would practice instead of having English. At first the plays were held at the school, but later they became a community event and were moved to the Masonic Hall.
After the play Santa would come and hand out little brown bags filled with candy and an apple and orange.
Students would get together in the evenings to play Wild Goose Chase and Kick the Can. Depending on how many kids were playing the games would often spread throughout the entire town.
In the summer there were free outdoor movies. A screen would be put up in an open area and people would sit in their cars or on blankets to watch.
“It was a dress up night,” said Ruth Marie (Hansen) Sharratt. “It was a really neat thing.”
After eighth grade the students were bussed to St. Cloud to attend high school.
“Most of us found it frightening,” said Janice (Jansky) Wicks. “Everything was so big and there were so many people.”
“When I had to go to St. Cloud is was the worst time of my life,” said Foss. “We went from a class of five to 300. I felt like I didn’t belong there.”
The Clearwater students did have an advantage over the St. Cloud students, however. Teacher Lillian Oatman had taught them art in nearly every medium, along with how to read music and play flute-a-phones (recorders).
The group looks forward to getting together again in April.
“We all went to grade school together and rode the bus to high school together,” said Pribyl. “We had fun together and grew up together.”
