Wallace and Clara Turner Oral history
Description
This is an excerpt from an oral history conducted by Betty Prince and Kent Brandebery with Clara Turner (McClure) and Wallace Turner. The recording is part of the Larkspur Oral History Project. This recording mainly concerns the history of Lone Tree School and other schools in Douglas County, Colorado. Mrs. Clara Turner discusses the old school building, the original school buses in 1939-1940, and the consolidation of the schools in 1958. Clara McClure Turner (1906-2003) is the daughter of Lucy and Jay McClure. Her father's family settled in Canon City, Colorado, and Grandfather McClure carried mail from Canon City. Mrs. Turner was born on the "Miller Place" off Larkspur Road. She married Wallace Turner (1906-2005) and 1946 they moved to the Ford Place in Monument, Colorado.
Object Information
Date Created:
June 6, 1993
Local ID:
1994.014
Collection:
Larkspur Oral History Project
Rights:
Item protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License (CC BY-NC)
Transcription:
BRANDEBERY: But you shipped in coal. CLARA TURNER: Yeah. To keep the schoolhouse warm we had a great big, round pot-bellied stove, I guess you'd say. It was in the middle of the school. Most of the time the teacher kept the fire going, most of the time the kids didn't. BRANDEBERY: Then she boarded with neighboring ranchers. CLARA TURNER: Most of the time we boarded the teachers. Most of the time we boarded the teachers. WALLACE TURNER: The teacher had to go up and start a fire and clean their own schoolhouse before the kids got there and clean it up there at night before they went home. PRINCE: And you said you hauled—the kids took turns at takin' water. Now where did you get the water? Was it out of the creek? CLARA TURNER: We took it from our homes. PRINCE: Oh, you took the water from the home. CLARA TURNER: Now how we took water. Part of the time we couldn't have taken the water because part of the time we rode the horse, like that, see, and we couldn't have packed any water. So I suppose when we done that the other kids had to take the water. But we took turns the kids, you know, takin' water to school. And I suppose it probably was kind of terrible water for drinkin’ I don’t know. The toilet was down over the hill.