A Wagon on the School House

            The Witts Spring School House was built by the WPA in 1935. This may have been the most exciting thing that had happened in our community up to that point. Of course in October of 1936 I was born and for me that was the most exciting thing ever to take place in our community, according to me, myself and I.

            The building was built of native stones. It was a rectangular building, which at first housed first grade through 12^th grade. It also had a gym for basketball with a too short court and a much too low ceiling. There was a crawl space under the whole building which was not tall enough to stand up in, but could house a bunch of things, including benches to be used for seating in the gym for graduation, drama presentations, etc.

            How do you drive a wagon on a building of this height? The answer is you don’t drive the wagon. You wait until Halloween night and get a bunch of country boys who are looking for mischief to perform on their community. They found one of the neighbors who had a rubber tire wagon and after failing at killing themselves by riding it down a curvy hill they came up with the idea to put the wagon on the school house. They roll it up to the school and disassemble it and using ropes they haul it piece by piece to the top. They reassemble it on top of the school. They accessed the roof by finding a window that they could go through into a class room. There was a small room on the stage side of the gym that had a ladder into the ceiling and a trap door onto the roof itself. I don’t know how they got it down. I was not present to witness that event. I assume that adults are as smart as boys and that they reversed the process the boys used to put the wagon there in the first place.