Kids playing in the yard at Alleghany School winter 1980-81. Girl closest to the building is Julie McGibben of Pike, the kid on the ground is Tonya Carter of Forest City.
Funny how, if we live long enough, personal stories become historical accounts. The back page of the July 18, 2024, Mountain Messenger featured a 50-year-old article dated June 20, 1974 with two items related to Alleghany. The first item was regarding the proposal to build a new school in Pike. Oddly, the article made it sound like the Alleghany School consisted of a single K-6 classroom. Evidently the author had not seen the school, because if he or she had been to the school, they would have known that the K-6 room was only one portion of the school. The Jr. High and High School classes occupied three additional classrooms. A small cafeteria was added after there was a general revolt over “Larry’s Frozen Lunches”.
When I was in the 5th grade, (76-77 school year) there was a push to treat all students throughout the State the same. This meant two changes for Alleghany School, first, a lunch program was introduced. The first year, we were given Larry’s Frozen Lunches and the only good thing about them was the fruit juice that came in a cone shaped paper container. Iris Davis the assigned lunch preparer, wisely did not thaw the juice, it was a popsicle! She heated the remainder and the food and it was awful. The following year, a small cafeteria was installed downstairs. Iris now had a little kitchen where she worked wonders. There was no room for seating, we still ate outside or at our desks.
The other change was that the younger students from Alleghany had to stay at school a couple of hours longer. Some of the students were from Pike and Forest City. The younger grades got out earlier than the rest of the students, but there was only one bus to take the Pike and Forest City kids home. The younger kids that rode the bus had to stay at the school until everyone got out at 3 pm. They got to do crafts and play but physically could not leave the school grounds. The younger kids who lived in Alleghany got to walk home. With the new changes, it was deemed unfair to let part of the students leave earlier than the rest. Adding another bus trip wasn’t feasible, and as a result, they all had to stay for the full day.
Two trailers were added to the school’s configuration in time for the start of 1978-79 school year. The larger of the two trailers became the 4th to 6th grade classroom with K-3 staying in the original K-6 classroom. The smaller trailer was the “music room” where music classes and band practice took place. The high school rock & roll band was LOUD, and technically we weren’t permitted to use the gymnasium. As mentioned in that 1974 article, the gymnasium had been deemed unsafe, and by 1975 school use was forbidden. An exception was made for holiday parties.
Because there was no gymnasium that could be used for sports, during the wintertime, physical education requirements were met by bussing the students to The Boreal Ridge Ski Area once a week. My brothers and I missed a lot of the ski program because we were usually snowed in at the Golden Bear Mine. There were exceptions, such as the time that my parents rented a house in Alleghany for the winter or we made arrangements to stay out, usually with teachers.
Those ski days were twelve-hour days, with four hours on the bus. Even though I wasn’t in high school yet, the “big kids” let me sit in the very back of the bus with them. This was a privilege and despite the fact that the back of the bus made me carsick, I accepted the invitation. The bus had an 8-track tape player and Jesse Buel the bus driver let the high school kids pick the music. They always requested Hotel California by the band The Eagles. We heard it over and over and over again. During much of that time I was carsick, but I wouldn’t budge from my privileged place in back with the “big kids”. As a result of this negative conditioning, I HATE The Eagles, but it gets funnier, because evidently there were two favorite 8-track tapes, The Eagles and The Steve Miller Band. Even now, I barely know the difference between the two, because in my mind they are “The Eagles” all lumped together into one carsick haze.