Dollhouse Decorating – My First School

Dent, Ohio must have been the last place in Hamilton County to come into the 20^th century. Located on Harrison Pike, twenty miles west of Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati, the Dent School was a four room affair on two floors – 3 classrooms and a principal's office. Each room was about the size of a present-day middle-class living room, where kids in grades 1-12 learned their 3 Rs: reading, righting and 'rithmetic.

I made this room box for my daughter Laurie when I tired of her eight-year-old whining about the privations she suffered on going to school, mainly in winter. Besides this visual example, I'm sure I laid some, “Well, in my day ...” nonsense on her.

While the incentive for this project may have been, “I'll show you,” the memories it now evokes are precious,

I went into the first grade in the 1948-49 school year. There was no running water at Dent school. A well was capped with a hand pump. We all drank from the same enamel cup that hung from its spout. A real petri dish for germs, I guess, but nobody died.

The play ground sloped gently down to a creek. Each heavy rain gouged gullies, which looked like the Grand Canyon to a six-year old. We played a thrilling game called Jump The Ditch. I did once, anyway, and went splash. Only the biggest kids made it, but it was exciting to watch.

The high point of the year was when the grown-ups moved the privy. A neighboring farmer wrapped a rope around the outhouse a hauled it aside. A group of fathers took turns at digging the new Hole To China. I remember them laughing when one of the men yelled, “Don't splash!” as they threw the first shovels of dirt and rock into the old pit.

The next school year, Springmeyer Elementary, was built and I was happy to go to a real school. The Dent School downgraded to a garage, its playground crowded with junked cars.

This is kind of a long timeline post, I know, and has very little to do with dollhouse decorating, except to share with you where my enthusiasm for miniature comes from. Little details like the initials carved in the desk top, which unfortunately do not show in these picture. They are LR + JZ, (not the rapper, but Josh Zarimba, whom my daughter Laurie Rall was sweet on). The memory of her blushing and screeching, “Oh, Ma!” floods back every time I dust this room box, a memory that connects two generations.

Keeping memories alive – that's what has kept up my enthusiasm for miniatures going for all these years. What is your driving force?