The first reunion for former students of Muir School, a one- room school that closed its doors in the late 1960s, will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Memorial Park.
Class of 1959 graduate Larry Jones plans to attend the reunion organized by Kenneth and Terry Higgins.
Jones recalled his childhood days attending the school where students from had all eight grades packed into one room. Back then, Muir students went to school for only eight months.
"There were 20 to 30 kids at the school," Jones said. "I think when I graduated there were three in my graduating class. Of course, it's that typical story where you walk to school every day uphill both ways - rain sleet, snow, dry weather, what- ever - it didn't make a differ- ence. We (Jones and two his sis- ters) always walked to school."
Jones said the students didn't have any organized sports pro- grams, but playing ball during recess helped make up for it.
Jones shared many memories of his younger days playing soft- ball games during the warmer months and the type of games children played during the harsh winters.
"We had a lot of snow," he said. "More snow than we do
now. We'd just go slidng and there was a little bit of an incline there and we'd go sledding down that."
He said one of his favorite games to play in the winter time was fox and goose, a game he describedassimilarto"tag.'
"You make a ring in the snow, maybe 50 foot in diameter and you make a complete ring and then maybe another ring inside that," Jones explained. You just tromp around and knock the snow down and then you make spokes. Then somebody is designated as "It' and then you'd have to go tag somebody and you have to stay in that ring or the two rings. If you're in the middle, that's the base and nobody can tag you while you're there, but there can only be one person there at a time."
A less heartwarming memo- ry Jones remembers is how the older students would pick one person each month to clean the school at the end of the day.
"That person had to stay there and sweep the school, empty the trash and get it all ready for the next day," Jones said.
"I took my turn doing that and it paid $5 a month, and I thought I was wealthy."
Jones doesn't feel slighted in his education based on the size of the school, adding that he felt his teacher provided him with a good education.
"I went all eight grades with
the exception of one semester to the same teacher," Jones said. "She was a terrific teacher. What I should've done when she was still living was thank her for what she did for us because she had her hands full. She had first graders; she had eighth grad- ers and everything in between. I know there were times that were pretty trying to her."
The 1960s brought change for all of Callaway County's one- room, country schoolhouses. In the late sixties, Muir School was incorporated into the South Callaway School District.
"I wound up graduating from Fulton High School in 1963, but I think it was five, six or seven years later that it (Muir) was shut down and the kids all went to elementary and high school in South Callaway," Jones recalled. "Some of the schools that were closer to Ful- ton wound up going to Fulton. There were some out in North Callaway where kids ended up going to Williamsburg or Hat- ton-McCredie or Auxvasse."
North of Muir School was Brown School and Red Star School off State Road UU, where his mother attended.
"Those schools were scat- tered all around," Jones said. "They had usually one teacher and anywhere from 10 kids to 50 kids...If you were in the first grade, you were exposed to older kids because they taught
right there in front of you...You saw what was coming up and what you were gonna be doing in the next few years. I think a lot of kids learned from that."
Jones thinks Muir School was named after the man who donated some land to the school district. When the school district changed, Jones thinks the one-acre school property reverted to the family that once owned that piece of land.
Times have certainly changed, Jones said, as the pub- lic school system has expanded considerably to reflect Calla- way's growth since the sixties.
"With the exception of maybe the kindergartners, you change classes," he said. Well, I guess that doesn't happen until fifth or sixth grade, but you change rooms and all that. See, I didn't do that until I got to high school. It was just one room, same room."
Jones stills stays in touch with some of his former classmates, both older and younger, and his sisters who also attended the tiny school, saying he often runs into former students.
He gave the Kingdom of Cal- laway Historical Society a class photo from 1953, only a few years before the school closed.
All reunion attendees are encouraged to bring pictures and other memorabilia to share with classmates.