HISTORY: Annette Jessie Swain and the Bedrock School, by Marie Templeton and the Rimrocker Historical Society

Picture Credits Ken Bonner and the Rimrockers

School Memories: by Annette Jessie Swain McWilliams. Condensed from an article in the June 1992 Bedrock School Bulletin, which was published by R. Lowell Shideler. We have his permission to use these articles.

I was a small five-year old blond girl when I entered the Bedrock school in the fall of 1922. My family moved to the old Bills’ place in late spring of 1922. The move was made in a wagon drawn by a team of horses.

I rode the four miles to school behind Richard on Mary, our thoroughbred mare, until my younger brother Tom started to school and replaced me on Mary. I then rode my beloved little mule, Annie.

Most of the students and also the teachers, in many cases, rode horses to school, which they tethered in the stable or to the fence posts on the north side of the school. There were two doors on the schoolhouse, one on the east and one on the west that opened into a cloakroom, stage and small alcove with a table where the bucket of drinking water with a dipper was placed. We all drank out of the dipper until some teacher decided it wasn’t sanitary and made us all bring our own cups with our names on them. The cistern was outside the west door and the older boys took turns pumping the water and carrying it into the alcove.

The stage took up about 1/5 of the schoolhouse and I loved it as we always had programs for all the holidays. We put on plays and sang songs. To me the plays were the best part of school, as I often had leading parts and loved acting.

There were windows on both the north and south sides of the buildings and we loved looking out the south windows from our desks to see the occasional car go by, plus the horses and wagons, horsbackers and other things taking place on the main road through Bedrock.

One of our teachers decided that we were too distracted by the events on the main road and had the south windows boarded over. After that there was no sun shinning in and the brightness within diminished considerably. The children complained and became depressed. I think the windows were opened up after I graduated.

On the playground we rode stick horses, played hide and seek and jumped rope. I don’t remember much about the games we played in the first four grades, but when I was in the sixth grade and becoming aware of boys there were two games that I loved. Flying Dutchman and Last Couple Out.

Several times during the school year, usually on May Day or the last day of school, we took school excursions. On May Day we would usually walk up in the hills behind George Ayers place looking for arrowheads and picking wildflowers---Indian paintbrush, daisies, honeysuckle and lupine. These were glorious days for me, as I loved climbing in the rimrocks. On the last day of school we rode horses to Box Canyon. This was a wondrous event for me and I would still like to go to Box Canyon.

Then came the last day of school and freedom for the summer, but we were always glad to return to school in the fall and catch up on all the doings of our classmates.