No Helicopter Parenting Here

Getting Stuck on the Way to School

Edmund Gates, Jr., my father, started school at the old Woodland School when he was 4 years old. Incidentally, when I asked him why he was so young when he started, he replied, "They thought I was smart."

The original Woodland schoolhouse was located in the timber, across the road to the west from the present home of Bob and Ruth Ann Hightower. The school offered education to the local children through the first eight grades.

Mr. Armstrong, the teacher, (not related to the Armstrong family that later lived in the Bend) stayed in the bunkhouse on the Gates farm. This predated the era when Woodland had a teacherage, a house on the school property specifically built to provide housing for the teacher or teaching couple.

One morning Ella, age 8, was driving the buggy pulled by Old Fancy. Mary, age 6, and Little Edmund were with her on their way to school. Floris Cannon had spent the night with Ella. She was riding with them to school that morning, too. Ella missed the road and the buggy slid off and locked the wheel on a little black jack tree. My father recalled how he tried unsuccessfully to get the buggy unstuck so they could proceed to school. At that young age, Dad had already internalized that he was the “man” and should do all he could to rectify the situation.* As an adult, he related how impossible it was for a little four-year old to get the buggy back on the road. Yet I sensed, even as a little guy, he felt he should have been able to handle the situation. The four of them reluctantly walked back to the Gates farm to get help. Their father returned with them and cut the tree away from the wheel. Much to her credit, Fancy, the old mare, stayed very calm throughout the entire ordeal.

Mary Elizabeth and Ella Edith Gates in the school yard
of the original Woodland school house in the west Bend.

Floris Cannon Brandenburg, would later be my teacher at Ralston Public School when I was in grades four-six. She loved to rave about what a terrific mare Old Fancy was. I can still hear her exclaiming in her expressive way peppered with her inimitable laugh about her exploits with “those Gates kids.”

In light of all the concern and care given to supervision of activities of children today, I marvel that Aunt Ella was driving the buggy pulled by an animal weighing three-quarters of a ton! No one could accuse Grandma Gates of being a helicopter parent! Grandpa had no thought for the liability of having a neighbor’s child riding in a buggy with his 8-year-old driving. Boy, have times changed! Yet all four riding in that buggy lived long lives with purpose and a sense of responsibility and integrity contributing much to others in their sphere of influence.

As a retired school teacher I can’t help but wonder if the children were issued a tardy slip!

*To this day, even though Dad is unable to walk and his speech is limited, he still feels a sense of being the one “leading out” in the work, especially the care of the cattle. Less than a month ago, I had put on my sweatshirt preparing to go feed the cattle, being careful not to have on my coat or the stocking cap since I know he doesn’t like to think of me feeding the cattle by myself. To my surprise, he gazed with those big blue eyes at my sweatshirt and enunciated clearly, “What are you getting ready to do?” Old habits established by age four are hard to break at age 95!