Elsie

I recently reviewed Tony Danza’s memoir about spending a year teaching a single grade 10 English Class. Still in her teens my own mother set out to teach 11 grades in a one-room school in rural Nova Scotia. The present memoir tells of a twenty-something young lady who leaves the luxury of Long Beach California to teach in a homesteading community in Arizona in 1913, a year after the territory attained Statehood. She taught only five grades but the neighbourhood she lived in lacked running water, electricity, and central heat.

In her favour her neighbours welcomed she and her fellow teacher supplying them with accomodation, meals, and moral support. Her students were well-mannered and eager to learn. Letters home from their remote location took time and included a list of items they wanted sent on. The Sears and Roebuck Catalog gained well-worn pages. Travel in was by train, then stage coach, and even horseback. Roads?

The book contains editorial comment, excerpts from Elsie’s diary, letters home, and pictures from her Kodak Brownie Camera. The details are often repetitive and mundane. How often do we need to know she did her washing--albeit in the creek, or cooked. What begins as an interesting frontier adventure becomes somewhat mundane. Which may explain why I set it down for a couple months before resuming it.

In her second year of teaching she moves to a larger school in a more civilized setting. She taught through the years of WW#1 but lost friends to more prosaic things like disease and accident.

This book assembled by her granddaughter.