My mother had many memories of her teaching days at the Tom Benton school. She fondly remembered the students and the joy of teaching. But her other memories were mostly of how cold it was. Cold in the home where she boarded, the outhouses outside the school, but most of all in the school itself. There was the usual pot bellied stove that she had to get started in the mornings and tend throughout the day. The seats in the school were arranged (and nailed to the floor)in rows that went from front to back. Students near the back were freezing while those in front were too warm. She decided it would make more sense and keep all the students more comfortable if the seats were arranged in a semi-circle around the stove. So she enlisted the help of the larger boys and moved the seats into a semi-circle. When she got back to school the following Monday morning, to her dismay, the seats had been torn up again and nailed back into the original rows. A member of the "school board" to! ld her that the seats were never to be moved again. I don't know why they objected -- perhaps it wasn't "traditional." Or maybe it was because she hadn't asked for permission. In any case, my dad proposed to her about that time so her teaching career would have ended anyway. Jeanne