Oct 17, 2015 5 min read

Teachers are getting back into the routine, yellow school buses are back on the road and students are using the Internet to find information for school projects. All are signs that the school year has begun, but the time of year once looked quite different.

Eugene Painter, who attended Avella Area High School during the Great Depression, reflected on his high school experience and how much the village has changed.

Painter, one of eight children, attended elementary school in Independence Township until 1928. The school had two rooms – one for first through fourth grades and another for fifth through eighth grades. Painter then attended Avella Area High School and graduated with his class of 23 students in 1932.

Students from both Cross Creek and Hopewell townships attended Avella Area High School. The school did not have a cafeteria, meeting room, auditorium or gymnasium. The building simply consisted of classrooms and offices, but the school made use of the whole building.

The basement contained the girls’ home economics department, the boys’ manual training department, science classes, as well as the janitor’s room and heating system. It wasn’t until after World War II that students at Avella Area High School began typing, bookkeeping and shorthand classes for business students. A gymnasium was added to the school at around the same time.

Though he’s not exactly sure, Painter guessed there were between eight and 10 teachers in the high school. According to Painter, the school had the usual courses, including an option of Latin or French as a foreign language. He took two years of each. But it was his history course that still stands out to this day.

“Course I loved history. Born with it. I grew up with it. I lived it,” Painter said.

The activities offered were limited, but Painter took advantage of many opportunities. The only sport offered was football, and Painter became the equipment manager for the team. During his junior year, he joined the debate team and played alto horn for the orchestra. In addition to his schoolwork, Painter’s mother wanted him to learn the piano when he was 12.

“That was a fiasco,” Painter recalled.

Like the curriculum, getting to school has not changed. Students still rode a bus on a paved road to school. Unlike students today, Painter doesn’t remember any snow days. Whenever there was bad weather, “pretty much they just put chains on the bus and we went,” he said.

His bus was different from modern school buses. Rather than having the distinct yellow color, the buses were a shade of green.

“(The bus) had seats along both sides, from the driver’s side and the door back–they were just benches, on both sides–and then they had a bench down the middle, and that’s where the boys rode,” he said. “The girls rode on the seats on the sides and the boys rode in that bench in the middle.”

During their lunch break, students ate the lunches they had brought from home and then went to a neighboring field to play soccer.

At that time, Avella did not have a library. The closest library was in Washington, and rather than driving to Washington – a one-way trip took anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes – Painter got information from encyclopedias his family owned. He was an avid reader, especially in the winter, and would usually receive three to five books for Christmas.

Students were not only responsible for their homework, but also their chores at home, including carrying wood and coal into the house for the furnace.

The Great Depression took its toll on the school, most memorably when Painter’s class trip to Washington, D.C., was canceled.

“We were the sixth class in Avella High School, and we were the first class that didn’t get to go to Washington, D.C., because our money had been taken by the (local) bank closing.”

When Painter graduated in 1932, he and four of his classmates were in the school orchestra. The five of them stayed behind to play with the orchestra while the other seniors walked in the graduation procession. Once they were no longer needed, Painter and his classmates left their instruments and rushed to join the other students onstage.

“We always had good teachers, and we always had good students in Avella,” Painter said.

After Painter graduated from high school, he attended University of Cincinnati for two years. In those days, the students alternated between going to school for eight weeks and working for eight weeks.

His experiences have changed his perception on education, and it was the quaint setting of Avella that made Painter grateful for what he had.

“As I told my great-grandsons, just keep working hard. That’s all you can do. Take advantage of what you have.”

Grace Scofield is homeschooled.