Ernestly ?!Ernestly ?!By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
Last week I told you about the miniature country schoolhouse
beside Highway 2 a few miles west of Reston, Manitoba; how after
almost 20 years of resolution I finally photographed it; my feeling
that there had to be "a story" behind it beyond the
perfunctory words on a brass plaque. I appealed, I told you, to
my acquaintance, Rusty Manning, long-time publisher of the Reston
Recorder.
As I had requested, and hoped, Rusty sent me several pages
from a municipal history book on Prairie Rose School, its beginning
and eventual closing, and the erection of the miniature and cairn
in 1979.
Eagerly I pored over three pages of history for "rumours
of greatness" - to borrow a phrase from Dale Eisler - that
would explain the special attachment of the people of a tiny rural
Manitoba tract to their country school.
I read and reread the pages with a distinct sense of disappointment.
It mentioned no individuals of prominence who had their beginnings
there; no epic achievements. It simply detailed its genesis from
a conviction that "man shall not live by bread alone,"
and the progression from classes in a country church to a school
building built for that purpose; the ratepayers' meetings that
made it possible, the teachers, trustees and superintendents who
served it, its dedication to the "glory of God and to learning."
Mentioned, of course, were teachers' salaries of $30 per month,
heat from a pot-bellied stove and water delivered in a cream can
for 25 cents a week; annual school picnics, field days and Christmas
concerts; school entries in the Reston fair, a hot plate provided
to make hot lunches possible; fencing of the yard when Highway
2 was built, and the consolidation of schools which finally brought
about the school's closing and the building's conversion to some
practical use in connection with a feed lot.
Ho, hum.
Finally I pinpointed my problem. I was looking for something
beyond the normal: for the hidden "story" referred to
in the opening paragraph above.
And I remembered a touching essay written in Time Magazine
by "contributor" Roger Rosenblatt in response to a heart-rending
occasion you will all remember.
"I have never believed that life is revealed in its cataclysmic
moments, its 'wake-up calls,' but rather in repose, when people
go about the quieter business of being who they are. Journalists
tend to turn to where the noise is. One of the things your death
bequeaths is a reminder to look where the noise is not. One can
tell far more interesting things about a crowd at a picnic than
a mob in the streets, or about someone like you when you were
writing poems and performing in school plays, or just dreaming
without a sound, than when murder made you a 'national symbol.'"
This, of course, was only part of the essay. Titled "A
Note for Rachel Scott," it was Mr. Rosenblatt's personal
tribute to a young girl of beauty, intelligence and promise, as
representative of too many children whose lives and priceless
potential were wiped out in the senseless massacre at Columbine
High School in Littleton, Colorado, not long ago.
For as long as history lasts, that sad and evil day will be
seared into the memory of the survivors of the victims, preserved
in the chronicles of the community's history, and deeply etched
in stone cairns which will immortalize the death of the community's
children - and innocence.
So how much better that the former site of Prairie Rose School
at Reston, Manitoba, simply honors the glory of God, and the happy
memories of a typical country school, its dedicated teachers,
trustees and parents, and students whose worth is measured by
those who remembered them for neither great achievement nor great
evil, but for their growth into citizens of integrity, personal
worth, human dignity and examples in living - people who went
about the quiet business of being who they were, and are treasured
for it by those who knew and now remember them.
Sorry it took some time to sink in.
My address (also listed on the Review's Website) is ernestly@pathcom.com.
Box 400, 904 East Avenue
Weyburn, SK
S4H 2K4
Phone: (306) 842-7487
Fax: (306) 842-0282
E-mail: weyburn.review@sk.sympatico.ca
This web page and its contents are copyright of the Weyburn
Review (1987) Ltd.
