Early Grapeview schools

When Fred Curl gave up on transporting children to the Detroit school, the school board bought a secondhand Model T Ford and one of the teachers took on the additional job of driving. There was a steep hill about a half mile from the school and often the car with its load couldn't make it. The teacher would send the girls ahead on foot and direct the boys to push. Sometimes she would tell all the children to walk to school while she waited for the engine to cool a bit.

A few years later, Charlie Baird bought a Chevy truck and built a closed bed with seats on it. To keep the children warm, he ran the exhaust pipes under the seats. The truck ran about 10 mph flat out "and the children became accustomed to Charlie's bushy-bearded face expelling tobacco juice out the open window as he drove."

An eighth- or possibly 10th-grade education was considered sufficient by most students, whose expectations looked no further than a job in the woods for the boys and marriage and families for the girls. One graduate described how it was determined whether a student would be allowed to pass out of eighth grade: "One stayed in eighth grade until he could pass the state tests. I often wonder how we did pass them, as the questions were taken from any book used in the state and they were far from standardized. We must have had foresighted teachers. When I had to take the state exams, or when there was a spelldown, Mother would drive to Allyn to take me. We stayed with Mrs. Budding and they put our horse in their stable and fed it the hay Dad had sent for it, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I enjoyed the tests, as they didn't seem hard to me and I got to meet other children from Detroit, Belfair, Victor and Allyn."

A Detroit community news item in a June issue of the 1907 Journal expressed pride in the fact that "Detroit furnished the only successful eighth-grader outside the Shelton school. Miss Ada Malaney is to be congratulated on her success, for the terms have been short and the school on several occasions poorly equipped as to teacher."

Students who did want to continue their education had to room with a host family and attend high school in Shelton, Olympia or Tacoma. Bryan Rauschert wrote about deciding to go home to Detroit from Olympia.

"The 10th grade was as far as I could manage at Detroit and I finished high school in Olympia. I was pretty homesick there and decided one spring day to come home for a weekend, riding my bicycle. Except for several miles near Olympia the road was gravel or worse. I left Friday afternoon when school was out. Finally it became too dark to ride and I was down to walking and pushing the bike. I still had about 5 miles to go and the Mason Lake school house was close at hand. So I decided to stay there overnight and finish my journey in the morning. The building was locked but I found a window that would open about a foot and I crawled in. There was no wood so I crawled back out, rustled wood, got back in, built a fire, and slept on the floor that night. At daylight, I continued on my journey."

As early as 1916 there was discussion of possibly consolidating the Detroit district with districts to the north for the purpose of providing a high school, but giving up local independence was not seen as desirable. A small office/library was eventually added to the two-room school at Detroit, the facility was expanded with portable buildings, and the site provided classroom space for the community until the 1980s. When it was finally outgrown it was housing 60 children in grades one through six.

■ Jan Parker is a researcher for the Mason County Historical Museum. She can be reached at [email protected]. Membership in the Mason County Historical Society is $25 per year. For a limited time, new members will receive a free copy of the book "Shelton, the First Century Plus Ten."