Sitting around a campfire and sharing stories with neighbors is a Liberty Lake tradition. This month, as part of its 2015 "Neighbors and Neighborhoods" series, the Liberty Lake Historical Society invites you to a virtual fireside reunion with this handful of Liberty Lake School alumni (in order of entrance year): Ron Knudsen, George Tichy, Bill Hughes, Tom Vincent, Ron Phillips, Charlene Tichy Melrose, Jan Hines Looney, Lynn Rasmussen Vincent, Connie Hughes McCall, Greg Tichy, Karen Hughes Johnson and Cathy Ryan Reese. All but three of these "forever" neighbors and lifetime friends still live locally. Because the conversations were separate, editorial liberties were taken to mesh each person's words and thoughts as though all were reminiscing around the campfire. 

Connie: I had two different kindergarten teachers in one year, Mrs. Vote and Mrs. Goolick, who had a skunk for a pet! 

Lynn: I had Miss Isham and Mrs. Anderson. One time school was cancelled because they were snowed out of Liberty Lake.

Ron K.: There were only three teachers when I was there. One was Mrs. Crabb, but she was her name's complete opposite - a real nice teacher.  

Ron P.: I had Dooley and Brown. Mrs. Dooley - Halley Dooley - was almost like a mom to us - huggy, short and rotund. 

Bill: Don't remember Dooley, but I do recall Anderson and Brown. One of them was the disciplinarian, whacking hands with a ruler. 

Ron K.: When I was there, the teacher could grab a kid and shake him.

Connie: And I remember Miss Isham giving a hack in front of the class!

Ron P.: There were no principals or administration. 

Tom: That was one of the great highlights of Liberty Lake School - no principals!

Jan: For show-and-tell, I brought my uncle ‘cause he was a sailor. 

Ron K.: We had special programs at school at Christmas or Halloween that were a big deal. But I won't say they were fun, because we always had to do them.

Tom: At Christmas one year, the school held a metal clothes hanger drive - whoever brought the most clothes hangers won a prize. At the tail end of the drive, I was ahead … until Larry Blair's dad bought a bunch of hangers so Larry won. All I got for my hard work was a Santa Claus candle. On my way home I chucked that candle where it belonged - in a well inside a building at Ted Weeks Resort where I put all the other stuff I didn't want. There was another contest at school, a snowflake cutting contest. The class voted on who made the best snowflake; I got third place. Lucky for that snowflake. 

Lynn: One time we got to present memorized poems for a special program. Mine happened to be a pretty funny poem. My mom worked and worked to help me memorize it. The response was so positive they asked me to recite it a second time! That's when I first realized how much I love the response of the crowd! (Author's note: Lynn grew up to be a popular, gifted and witty speaker.) 

Karen: We didn't bring paper to school. We did math out of boxes with scrabble-like tiles imprinted with numbers and symbols.

Cathy (same class): I don't remember doing math like that! I don't even remember doing math. But I do remember writing sentences using alphabetical tiles.

Karen: Hmmm. I don't remember writing sentences or alphabetical tiles!

Greg: Well I remember them both! The letter tiles were for spelling, too. We only used paper for penmanship, and Miss Isham supplied the paper.

Jan: I remember reading those Dick and Jane books. (All concur!)

Connie: Whatever books the school had were in stacks in the classroom. We never took anything home.

Greg: There was never any homework.

Bill: I was there for four years and no homework! 

Connie: In second grade, I was sent upstairs to the third and fourth grade class for reading. I was nervous being around the big kids, but Mrs. Anderson and Lynn soon put me at ease. It was fun.

Charlene: I went to Mrs. Brown upstairs for reading.

Tom: I liked that in third grade I got to sit in on eighth grade level math. We were all in the same room. When we moved to Greenacres School, I was bored! 

George, Charlene and Greg: We like that our parents never went to school for a conference. The teachers always came to our house for dinner - best way to do conferences! 

Recess 

Lynn: One of the best things about Liberty Lake School: If you finished your test early, you could just go outside and play! 

Greg: In the winter, the wind blew the snow across the fields (now Liberty Lake Golf Course) dumping it on the playground. So we'd build snow caves in the drifts and crawl in during recess. 

Bill: The rest of the year the playground was one big dirt patch with tumbleweeds. We built tumbleweed forts to crawl in. 

Tom: I was in fourth grade before I ever saw a blade of grass growing at that school.

Ron P.: There was a lotta' dirt. Still, we played kickball and tag. 

Ron K.: We made roads and tunnels for our cars in the dirt - digging trenches, laying boards across them, then covering it with dirt. The older boys would come along, probably Johnny Rademacher and Bob Rice who were like older brothers (they were about the only older boys in the school), and they'd say "whoops" as they stomped on our tunnels. 

Tom: There was a protruding brick ledge on the school that was what seemed to be 10-12 feet off the ground and slanted slightly downhill. We'd climb up on the ledge to see who could walk the furthest before falling off. 

(WARNING: Do not try this at home … or at school … or anywhere!)

Charlene: The girls liked the swings and merry-go-round.

Connie: The four teeter-totters were wide and long ones. You could easily make people airborne if you came down hard on the dirt. And there was an area we called the jail. The girls chased the boys and put them in it. 

Lynn: At recess one day, I married Dave Curry at the big tree on the corner.

Ron K.: Inside the school was a sandbox where Judy Christopherson and I had sand fights. That didn't sit well with the teacher. (Ron, a teacher himself, claims he mostly drove cars in it.)

Greg: Walking home from school was one of my favorite parts of going to school. There was always a group of us, and we'd stop and play catch or something in Liberty Lake Park until mom or dad called us home for dinner. 

Tom: You needed to get in a group when you walked by Ted Weeks Resort. One of the older boys owned a whip and waited there. If you were alone, you were fair game! 

Lynn: I remember walking to school past the house with the mean dog. One time it attacked one of the kids in our group. But I was brave; I ran all the way home. That dog was mean.

Connie: We walked through the apple orchard on the way to school. It was fun to pick crab apples with my brother to bring to our teachers who accepted them graciously.

Bill: Connie may have given hers to the teacher, but I ate them. I am not an apple polisher! 

Ron K.: I sometimes rode my horse to school with my sister Barb when we lived in the mountain above the (now) county park. We never saw bears, but there was a spot along the way where a cougar would be in the tree. It always left us alone. 

Ron P.: By the time I got there you had to get special permission to ride your horse to school, so I rarely rode. 

George: When they closed the school, dad organized a bunch of parents to try to keep it open. We lost.

Connie: Once at Greenacres, we sure missed our small schoolhouse. Looking back, it was a fantastic, one-of-a-kind experience. 

Ron P.: There were six resorts on the lake when we were kids. We had moms who led cub scouts, and we made fun, good memories at that old country school. Liberty Lake was a great place to grow up!