Dear Folks, Pat kept her promise and called me at 9:00 this morning. I hated her for that but nonetheless I got out of bed, got dressed, had my cup of tea and by 9:50 I felt that I was awake enough to drive to the schoolhouse where our museum is. When I walked into the museum the first bunch of fourth graders were already there and the museum volunteers certainly held their attention. I glanced over to the first group of students and there was Jamie. He spotted me just when I had spotted him and when he recognized me his eyes got big and he did a double take. It was obvious he certainly didn't expect me to be there. And yet he looked a bit apprehensive that I might run over to him and insist on a big hug in front of his schoolmates! Dale was our museum volunteer and when he saw me he broke off what he was telling the kids about old farm implements and called over to me to let me know he was so pleased to see me. I then went through our reference room and when Karen the volunteer saw me she also was pleased to see me. From there I went to our schoolroom where the children were sitting at the old fashioned wooden school desks that had a hole to hold an ink bottle in. Pat was right up there telling the kids about what schools were like back in the olden days (before television!). I'm embarrassed to admit that I just barged in on her class and totally disrupted everything. But Pat didn't seem to mind at all. In fact it got to the point that Pat and I made a good team. Both of us graduated from high school in 1949--she had gone through all 12 grades in the old schoolhouse and when they graduated there were only 22 in their graduating class. I in turn let the children know that I graduated from Niagara Falls High School in the same year but our graduating class totaled 630! It wasn't long before Jamie's group came into our schoolroom and it was obvious that he was ignoring me, probably because he was embarrassed. He sat in the last row of desks, paid attention to what Pat was saying but was very silent. After his group left, another group came in and then another. By that time, both Pat and I had forgotten what we wanted to tell the new group. Especially on the subject of Christopher Clapsaddle who was a farm boy who went to school at Zittle's Corners. I had volunteered the information off the top of my head and told the class that Christopher started school when he was 12 years old but that he hadn't graduated from the sixth (or eighth) grade until he was 21 years old. Both Pat and I explained that it had taken him that long to get an education because he was a farm boy who was always needed on the farm to help his father plow, plant, weed and harvest their crops. The only time he could go to school was during the winter months. BTW, when I got back home I checked my records regarding his school attendance and found that I had been dead wrong. In the first place he was 7 years old when he started school in 1842 but by the time he had finished school he was 26! By the time that the last group left, I checked my watch and realized that only two hours had gone by and that my brain and Pat's brain had become totally scrambled by that time. It didn't take us long to lock up the joint and go to our cars. When I opened my car door I gasped when I sat down on the seat. The temperature had climbed to over 90 degrees and the car was hotter than an oven. I turned on my air conditioner and let it run until I felt some cool air. When I got home to my air conditioned house I was starving to death which was ridiculous inasmuch as it was earlier than 12:30. My normal routine is that I have lunch around 1:30. On the whole I feel so pleased that I was able to contribute valuable information about the schools, ink wells, pot bellied stoves in the middle of the one-room school houses and both Pat and I delighted in telling them about having to use outhouses in the dead of winter when the kids needed to go to the bathroom. There's one more thing that I want to tell you that depressed both Pat and me. When we mentioned that we had graduated from high school in 1949, one of the kids did a mental calculation and blurted out "That was 56 years ago!" Sheesh, neither of us needed to be reminded that it was that long ago! Such were the few hours of teaching the fourth graders some of the history of the Town of Porter. vee