The Piney Ridge School


	Photo/Courtesy of AAHA of Fauquier County (a.k.a. Remington Colored School).

I take pride in being able to say to my spoiled children, “Now, when I was your age, we had to walk a mile through the snow and sleet just to get to school every day”. It gave me a sense of having had to “rough it” as a child growing up in Remington, Virginia. There was no bus and there were no parents driving up to drop us off in front of the school when I began my education in the first grade in September 1959. (There was no Kindergarten or preschool either.) But as I say this, I must also say that I view those days as some of the best times I can recall. Even before I was old enough to attend school, I was making history a name for myself there. My sister and I once entered a dance contest when she was seven and in the second grade and I was five and hadn’t yet started school. We performed a dance called “The Bird land”. We were a big hit, swinging and swaying and delighting the crowd. We won 1st prize in that contest, but for some reason, we never danced again in competition or school event. The next year I started the first grade and so, the adventure began.

In winter months one of the older boys would have to arrive at school 30 minutes early in order to build a fire in the wood stove that sat in the corner of the one-room building. Then he or someone else would have to grab a water bucket from the lunchroom, which was a room about eight feet long and thirty feet wide and was separated from the large classroom by a wall. That person had to take the bucket, go outside, cross under the barbed wire fence, and go into Mr. James Davis’s hay field to get water from the spring that ran through his property. They did this each day just so we could have fresh drinking water. Winter also meant that we could drag our sleds along behind us as we went to school. We walked a mile to school each day. The path we took to school went up the dirt state road in front of our house, through the field that separated Mr. Marvin Bowen’s farm from Mrs. Clara Carpenter’s house, then through Mr. Felix Penn’s cow pasture, which meant us having to dodge manure piles every two or three feet. The narrow path continued on through Cousin Anne Davis’s beautiful front yard. I remember we had cut a path right through the middle of her beautifully manicured lawn, from overabundance of use. I distinctly remember Cousin Ann insisting that we walk across her yard, rather than using the driveway, as it would have made us walk further (but not much further). After leaving her yard, we meandered along a wooded path that, when traveled at night, looked like it was made from a scene straight out of the tale of Icabod Crane and Sleepy Hollow. There, our path to school opened up into Mr. Sammy Gibson’s junkyard and then made its way on to the road that lead past a 400 pound hog that was too huge to move itself off the road to the path at the top of the hill and into the schoolyard. The schoolyard was big enough for a softball diamond. &nbspTwo huge swing sets, that would be outlawed if they were constructed today sat in front of two outhouses, one marked “Boys”, the other “Girls”. But bringing our sleds to school with us was a short-lived amenity, because one day as Johnny Ballenger was sleigh riding from the top of the hill, he didn’t get out of the way in time, ran smack into a large rock at the bottom of the hill, and busted his head wide open. From that day forward no more sleds were allowed at school. We had a similar problem when we started bringing our B-B guns to school. Some one let it be known that we were up in the woods playing “war” and that privilege was quickly abated.

Did I mention that this was a one-room school, with grades from one through seven being taught by a single teacher? Mr. T.J. Berry was that schoolteacher. My first year started out with just my cousin Annie Ruth and me, but then Lonnie Carter joined us in class, after about a week. So, it was the three of us in first grade. Lonnie and his cousin Sonny had to milk cows every morning before school, so they came in smelling of cows, barns, butter and hay.
I can remember that the first day of school most years would include a visit from Mrs. Gentry, who worked for the school board, but I never quite knew in what capacity she was employed. If you can imagine a thin, black, silver-haired, librarian-type, then you can imagine Mrs. Gentry. She stopped by to keep us mindful of how fortunate we were to have been afforded the luxury of our “Rosenwald” schoolhouse. She reminded us that the white folks at the school board were nice enough to have given us the hand-me-down books from the year before from the white school ‘over town’ in Remington. On occasion, they’d even let us have their second-hand desks. Once they’d gotten fed up with looking at all the names and initials etched on them, they would send them to us. As she told us about the generosity of the school board, she’d also remind us to take good care of this new equipment so that they (White people) would see how much we appreciated for us and might then decide to give us more things the next year. As she spoke, I spent that time trying to scrape off the chewing gum from under my “new” desk and trying to read the names scribbled on the desk, wondering who it had belonged to at the other school.

Walking home from school was the high point of each day; you never knew what to expect. You could always depend on an argument among the girls and, if you were really lucky, a fight might break out between some of them. The guys were always in the mood to see a good girl fight. But most days, the walk home was filled with horseplay, teasing, roughhousing and the occasional fist fight between the boys. Speaking of fistfights… Ali and Frazier notwithstanding, I witnessed one of the greatest fights known to man right there in the schoolyard between “Dennie” and “Lonnie”. There’s no doubt about it, Lonnie was a troublemaker; he’d start a fight every chance he’d get. I know because we fought at least once a week for the duration of our elementary school years. But those fights did not come close to matching what took place when Lonnie and I were in the third grade. Dennie was two grades ahead of us, but we all had recess together and, although I don’t know what started the fight, I’ll never forget how it ended.


	Photo/Courtesy of The Brown Family Collection “Did you see that fight today?”.

The day started off as it normally did, and I have no real recollection as to what brought on this particular fight. All I know is that it was the morning recess, and the two boys began the fight just as so many other fights had started since time began… “What’cha gonna’ do?” one said. “What’ CHU gonna do?” echoed his adversary. “I’ll show you what I’m gonna do”, then they raised their fists and began moving around in a circle opposite each other. Every now and then a punch would be swung, but it really didn’t look like they had their hearts in it. No one was pressing the fight. Then out of the blue, Lonnie threw a straight right hand and landed it flush on Sam’s nose. And then, even before it had been fully developed for TV, everything started moving in slow motion. A hush went over the gathered crowd. Lonnie was poised to throw yet another punch and Dennie was still standing with his dukes (fists) up when just then, Dennie closed his eyes and began slowly falling forward as though Paul Bunyon himself had felled him with his Axe. Ever so slowly he tumbled forward and there he ended up in a crumbled pile on the ground. Dennie was out cold. As the world returned to real-time speed, someone let out a yelp. At the same time some of us rushed to see about Dennie, while others gathered around Lonnie, patting him on the back in congratulations and rehashing the punched that was heard round the world. Dennie was okay and, though there was never a call for a rematch, I always wondered if it was a fluke punch or could he have done it again. I know from my own personal experience that Lonnie packed a heck of a wallop, but even that knowledge didn’t stop him nor I from continuing our own weekly brawl during recess, because, by then, it had become a tradition.

After attending 4 years at the Remington school, it closed when a new segregated school was built, Southeastern Elementary in Calverton, Va. This change in schools began a whole new learning experience of attending a school with more than one classroom, dozens of children and whole new adventures to write about.