Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

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PIONEER HISTORY OF INGHAM COUNTY

Primitive school life was not without its excitements and diversions. One day a strange dog appeared in the open doorway.
Stood for an instant with his front feet on the sill looking in at the
children, then some pigs rooting outside attracted his attention
and he turned away. A little girl, with more presence of mind
than the teacher, shrieked "mad dog," sprang over the benches
and slammed the door shut. The little girl was right. It was a
mad dog amd was shot after biting two or three animals that later
died of hydrophobia.
In the way of diversion there were singing schools for the grown
up pupils and spelling schools for everybody, while the boys and
girls of lesser years were well supplied with sports and activities of
their own planning. They not only had playthings but they made
the things they played with.
Their grape-vine swings, in the forest shade, grape-vine skipping
ropes and teeter boards balanced on a rail fence, were just as alluring as the modern high post swing in the glaring sunlight and the
teeter boards of evolution mounted on steel rods. Then there
was the "Big Pond" with its hand made rafts in summer, and the
ice in winter; and there was sliding down hill, on handsleds, on
boards and sometimes on a bob-sled borrowed from a neighbor.
One time the crust on the snow was so hard the girls threw their
shawls down and slid down hill on them. Their mothers never
knew it.
And last, but not least, there was the Tamarack swamp, less than
half a mile away, with its inexhaustible supply of chewing gum.
Just think of it! Genuine tamarack gum! No artificially flavored
by-product of coil oal refuse, but the life, the elixir of the tamarack
tree, bringing joy unspeakable to the hearts of those youthful
seekers after knowledge and woe unfathomable to the unhappy
wielder of the "birch." That teacher who could successfully
cope with the "gum problem" was teacher, diplomat, general,
all rolled in one.
The first group of pioneers of the Leek District turned out
thirteen school teachers; they lacked, of course, the multitudinous
qualifications of the modern teacher; were, no doubt, short on
phonetics and object lessons. The main object in the minds of
the young victims of those ancient methods of recitation was to
avoid the birch-but they could spell.