Isaac Palomaki Interview Side 2

Isaac Palomaki Interview, Side 2

Transcript at 1 second: (0:01)

IP: Well, we were fortunate if we were able to take--if we were able to get a car to go out sometime to go ride around. But, you know, it wasn't easy. We didn't have cars available like the young folks have today. [laughs]

ML: How early were you allowed to start dating?

IP: Well, I never--my parents never set any time for that. Well, that was… I can't think of a lot of other things we did. Well, of course, movie was a big thing on Sunday evenings or else even during the week on Saturday night or something, so. We used to have to--before they had…they had laws in the city of Ishpeming. They weren't supposed to have any movies on Sunday nights. We used to have to go to Negaunee. We used to take the bus from Ishpeming to Negaunee to see the movie. And then, of course, when we got able to drive, then we were able to go as far as Marquette when we went to the Nordic or to the Delft or there. So, those were big times, yep.

Transcript at 1 minute and 35 seconds: (1:35)

ML: What was the most fun you remember having in school?

IP: [pause] I can’t…I can't remember. You know, I have no idea what was the most fun other than the school activities. They were always important. They were a lot of fun. I can't remember. We used to--they used to have a boys’ club at the high school. What was it called now? It wasn't the High Boy. There was one club in there. And that was--they always used to put a freshman stag for the incoming freshman boys, you know. We would have a good time in a gymnasium having races and all kinds of exercises in there. That's where they discovered I could do a little running, so then I got on the track team. That was only during my--I guess it must have been my junior year. We didn't have--there was only a few fellows that participated, but we went to one UP [Upper Peninsula] meet in Houghton. And I think we had—well, I was on the relay team, and we took third place in that. Then we had a fellow that was a half-miler, so he won first in that. We had a good hefty fellow that was able to win the shot for us and another one that won the javelin throw. I don't think they allow that javelin throw anymore.

ML: Not that I can think of.

IP: I can't think of it. I haven't seen any here. That's kind of a dangerous thing, throwing that thing around, especially if there's any people. You have to be isolated somewhere where nobody's around, so.

Transcript at 4 minutes and 28 seconds: (4:28)

ML: You mentioned the 4-H. Was that a school-connected thing?

IP: No, that's a regular--that's a county affair. That was--that’s always sponsored by Michigan State University. I think they still have 4-H club work.

ML: Yes, but you could do things for that during school and workshop and that?

IP: Oh, yes. We did that in school. All the stuff, like collecting leaves and samples of wood and different kinds of soils, and that was all done during school time too. We used to get time off to go and work on these projects, so. That’s one of the--that was a lot--fun part in the spring of the year in school. We used to miss out on a lot of school. [laughs]

ML: So that was the big thing that the kids did?

IP: Yes, that was, especially the three upper grades, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, so. Yep. In the--you know, in the grade schools too, we had the… [clears throat] We had a regular graduation for eighth grade students. We had everything. We had the valedictorian, salutatorian, giftatorian, prophecy, and all that. We had the eighth grade from North Lake and the 8th grade from West Ishpeming. We always had the graduation exercises at North Lake then and a big program. So that was really something. I don't know if they have any more graduations or not when they get through in eighth, from eighth grade. I don't recall, anyway.

ML: No, they--now we have an eighth grade graduation, but it's not that big. [laughs]

IP: Not that big?

ML: No.

IP: I think we even had a giftatorian when we got through eighth grade.

ML: Really?

IP: Yeah.

ML: Some people get awards and things like that.

IP: Yes, that's right. They give awards.

Transcript at 6 minutes and 48 seconds: (6:48)

ML: How many years did you attend college?

IP: Four.

ML: What courses did you take?

IP: Industrial arts, and I minored in history and geography.

ML: Where did you go to college?

IP: Marquette, at Northern. It was called Northern State Teachers’ College.

ML: What kind of certificate do you have?

IP: I got a bachelor of science degree.

ML: Did you take any summer classes at all?

IP: Well, I went to a few summer classes that I had to pick up, you know. You couldn't always get them during their regular terms. So if they were offering a summer, I'd go and take them then, so.

Transcript at 7 minutes and 54 seconds: (7:54)

ML: How many grades did you teach?

IP: Let's see. I think I taught…that was the first, second, third, fourth, and I think it was seventh and eighth. There was no fifth or sixth grade.

ML: Oh, really?

IP: No, that was a one-room school.

ML: Wow.

IP: And that was--you know, you figure I took up the industrial arts course, and then I got stuck in one-room school with kids from first grade through eighth grade. And then when you're working with the students in the upper grades, and you have to try to have some kind of work for the lower grades to keep them busy while you're with the older ones. Well, you've got a couple of minutes. You gave them their homework, and they'd scribble something on there. I'm to (??) up (??) and (??) edit (??) them (??) now (??) [ML laughs]. That was the worst part of the teaching for me because I wasn't accustomed to working with--I never did any practice teaching with children of that age, so.

ML: Right.

IP: The only children I had--but they were at the school, John D. Pierce School. That was… All the students did their practice teaching over there, and we had them, of course, all the way from kindergarten through high school, so. But I had some of the lower grades that used to come to woodworking in the shop, and that's where I did my practice teaching.

ML: How many kids did you teach?

IP: I think we must have had about… I must have had about 30.

ML: In one room?

IP: Yeah.

ML: Wow.

Transcript at 10 minutes and 7 seconds: (10:07)

ML: Describe a typical day at that school.

IP: You mean at the college?

ML: No, when you were teaching.

IP: Well, there was… The children, they all lived about—oh, I think the farthest one was about a couple of miles from the school, and they were all--I think about the closest ones were about a mile away. And they had to walk to school in the morning, and they had to walk home again. And there wasn't very much time. Then we had recess over there, and in the fall and spring of the year, it was always baseball. They wanted to play baseball, and I was out there with them all the time. So--oh. And we had--that was a one-room school. It was. One of the boys, he was in seventh grade, and his parents were the janitor of the school, and he used to have to keep the fire going to keep the place warm in the winter. And in the--we had just an ordinary pump to pump water. And one time that was out of commission, so we had to get that fixed. And I had my two brothers come over there, and they worked on that while I was teaching. [laughs] And they had to go and get wrenches from--I don't know--two miles away from one of the students' homes, you know. They had a big enough pipe wrench to be able to work.

Transcript at 12 minutes and 1 second: (12:01)

ML: Where was the Fire Center school?

IP: That's--I don't know if you've ever been driving up that way. It's north of Ishpeming. Oh… Like you know where Deer Lake is? That lake, and if you keep following that road about ten miles from here. And I used to travel there with a car then every morning and come home. And during a snowstorm, to get over there, a lot of times that road was drift--the snow was drifting right across the road, a big one, and I had to close my eyes and press on the accelerator and hope I land on the other side of the road. I managed to get through. [both laugh]

ML: So, you said you drove a car then. How--where did you live then? Did you still live here?

IP: Yeah, I--not on this, but I was down the hill over there on that other side. ‘Cause I wasn't married then, so.

Transcript at 13 minutes and 11 seconds: (13:11)

ML: Right. What did the other students do while you were teaching one of the grades?

IP: Well, they were supposed to be studying and doing their work. But like I said, those younger ones, you know, you've got to be with them all the time to keep them busy. It was pretty hard to leave them alone. I used to work at night every day when I got home, some kind of work for them to do when they're, you know, when I was teaching the other classes. So I used to combine a lot of the subjects in both the third and fourth grade and same thing with the seventh and eighth grade. There isn't that much difference in the subjects, so. You could say that. And we had all the supplies in school there. You didn't have to--although you used to. I used to buy a lot of magazines that--for students of that age, you know, that they could study. There's always good articles in them for them, so.

Transcript at 14 minutes and 34 seconds: (14:34)

ML: What subjects were included?

IP: Well, we had history. We had grammar and arithmetic, geography. And in those days, we used to teach orthography. And if you know what that is, that's when you learn to pronounce words with different--the vowels and everything.

ML: Oh.

IP: And how to break up a word. That was interesting. And then, of course, we had taught agriculture.

ML: Oh.

IP: They had to get to know all the different breeds of horses and cows and chickens and hogs and… [laughs] So. But they had a nice group. And that was considered science, too, at the same time. And that was filled with questions, and they had to--that was part of their job, to fill out the answers to all those questions. They had to look up the information and... So.

Transcript at 15 minutes and 52 seconds: (15:52)

ML: What were your books and materials like?

IP: We had good materials. We didn't have any kind of leftovers. I thought that being out in the country that takes in the leftovers or something from around there, the other from North Lake and from West Ishpeming, but we didn’t have… We didn't have any problems with getting supplies. Whatever we asked for, we got, so.

Transcript at 16 minutes and 23 seconds: (16:23)

ML: What happened if you were sick?

IP: Well, fortunately, I didn't miss a day.

ML: Really?

IP: No. I…We went down there every day. Yeah. And we had—now, you have the superintendent for the school districts. In those days, they didn't have a superintendent. All they had was principal in the schools and then the one that was head of it all was the Marquette County School Commissioner, and he visited all the schools in the county. And at the--like for eighth grade, before you could graduate, you had to take a county exam, examination. That was an all-day thing, and that was usually given at the West Ishpeming School. And then if you passed the exam, then you were allowed to graduate. So, yep.

Transcript at 17 minutes and 38 seconds: (17:38)

ML: Did you have your own house while you were teaching? Were you living with you--

IP: No, no, no. I was living with my parents. So. Yeah.

Transcript at 17 minutes and 48 seconds: (17:48)

ML: How did you discipline the kids?

IP: I didn't have any discipline problem. When you had--I had about 11 children in that classroom, so there wasn't any discipline problem.

ML: 11 kids?

IP: No.

ML: Wow. So then there just weren't...

IP: And it was kind of fun for them, you know, to get somebody from the outside to come over there, you know. And I--when I played baseball and all the games with them outside all the time at recess and before school in the morning and noon hour a lot of times, so I didn't have any discipline problem at all.

ML: So then there just weren't any fifth and sixth graders?

IP: No, there weren't any fifth and sixth graders there. Maybe there was a couple majors (??), eh? [laughs]

ML: So there were just one or two in each grade?

IP: Yeah, that's all. I think I had two eighth graders and two seventh graders, and I think I had one third grader and two fourth graders, and I think I had…I had three first graders. So.

Transcript at 19 minutes and 12 seconds: (19:12)

ML: How did the parents react to—oh, I guess you said you didn't have any discipline problems, so there wasn't any problem with parents.

IP: No, I think they had--the parents and the children had some problems, but they never brought them up to me. I heard from the side that there are arguments with the parents, I guess. But that was… There were some other… Somebody must have been teasing one of the girls or something.

ML: Oh.

IP: Because actually, there was only--what did I have? Three families. There was a Korpi family and a Maki family, and an Ollila (??) family, and the kids were from all those three families. [both laugh]

ML: That must have been something.

IP: Yeah.

Transcript at 20 minutes and 4 seconds: (20:04)

ML: Did the school have any extracurriculars?

IP: No, nothing.

ML: So small. Did you have any other duties besides teaching in the school?

IP: No, that's all I had over there. No.

Transcript at 20 minutes and 20 seconds: (20:20)

ML: What are some of your most vivid memories of teaching?

IP: Well, I enjoyed working with the children. I enjoyed that part of it. And of course, teaching them was--because they were so willing to participate. You didn't have to try to force them to answer questions. They were always willing to answer, so. And it's fun when they participate in the cl—recitation, so.

ML: Oh.

IP: Yeah. I tried to get school, but there was--there were no openings in schools when I got through at the college. I got through right at the Depression in 1933.

ML: Oh.

IP: And I traveled throughout the whole Marquette County visiting school boards and asking, trying to put my application in for a teaching job. The first question they asked, “What experience do you have?” I said, “Well, I can't say that I have any because I'm just out of school.” And, you know, they had all kinds of teachers that were available that had experience already, experienced ones, so. A lot of them even lost their jobs. So.

ML: It must have been hard.

IP: It wasn't easy until I finally got the job at--I tried to get into West Ishpeming. I couldn’t. I wanted to get to be a principal over here, but there was always somebody ahead. I was single in those days. And so, it was most people that got the jobs, they were married, and... So, I mean, I struck out every time. So when this was offered to go over to the Fire Center, I said, “Well, I'll take it.” I didn't have any work. So, I got 60 dollars a month teaching.

ML: Wow. [both laugh]

IP: And then if I taught for the whole year, that I didn't drop out of there, I got a 100 dollar bonus at the end of the year, so.

ML: Oh.

IP: I guess my salary for the year, it comes to about 600 dollars or 700 dollars.

Transcript at 22 minutes and 53 seconds: (22:53)

ML: Did you eat lunch with the kids?

IP: Yeah, we all ate in the classroom there. So they had to carry their lunch, and I carried mine, so. Yeah.

ML: What other adults were at the school during the day?

IP: There weren't any other adults around, no.

ML: You mentioned a custodian.

IP: Yeah.

ML: Was he there after?

IP: They came after school was out. They came to clean it up then, so. Yeah. I imagine that student that I had there in seventh grade, I think he probably did most of the cleaning there for his mother, …

ML: Oh.

IP: …because the mother is the one that did…was the janitorial work there.

Transcript at 23 minutes and 43 seconds: (23:43)

ML: Here's a salary question, but you said 60 dollars a month?

IP: Yeah, 60 dollars a month.

ML: Did you ever belong to a teacher's union?

IP: No, there were no unions in those days. It didn't come in until they first started getting them when my wife was teaching. They had some kind of a teacher's organization in the township, but not around here. We didn't have any unions. I don't think they had any in Ishpeming or anywhere that I can recall of anyway, so.

Transcript at 24 minutes and 24 seconds: (24:24)

ML: Do you have any pictures or memorabilia from any of the schools?

IP: I was going to look up where I had a picture of the--a group picture of my grade at the West Ishpeming School, but I don't know where that is now. I was thinking I was going to look, try to find it, but I--then I forgot all about it, so. Yep. I don't have any--I didn't have any pictures of the children that I had at the Fire Center school. I wish I had had a camera. It would have been a nice thing to have.

ML: Yeah.

IP: Yeah.

Transcript at 25 minutes and 14 seconds: (25:14)

ML: What is the current condition of Fire Center school, or is it not still standing?

IP: It was dismantled. I think they dismantled that thing in… I think one other fella came in there. I graduated with him at the same time from Northern, and then he finally got--when I dropped out, he got this teaching job over there, and I'm not sure if he taught one year or two. So that school was closed in either [19]37 or [19]38, one or the other, so. And then somebody bought the building and they tore it down, and the fella that bought the school used the lumber to build a house, and the house that we built is almost right across the street from where I am now.

ML: Oh.

IP: [laughs] I said that's a memorial to me, …

ML: Yeah.

IP: …that was a school building that I used to teach in.

ML: Yeah.

IP: Yeah.

ML: So it closed in [19]37 or [19]38?

IP: Yeah, one or the other. Yeah.

Transcript at 26 minutes and 35 seconds: (26:35)

ML: What is your special memory of West Ishpeming?

IP: Oh…

ML: Does anything especially stand out?

IP: No, nothing that I can think of that was special that would really have stuck in my mind, so. Oh, that dates so far back that it's hard to recall anything.

ML: Yeah. So do you have any pictures at all of any teachers or friends or anything? [inaudible crosstalk]

IP: I'll go and see if I can find something from there, as far as that school (??).

ML: Okay.