Four Mile School was called Four Mile probably because it was four miles from the paved road at "The Y Corner" or four miles from Haskell or four miles from our farm.
As a six year old boy four miles in any direction was my whole world. It was a world of magic, of yellow Piper Cubs doing endless loops and spins in a blue sky. Angry P-38 chasing each other with the thunder as loud as an Oklahoma storm and you knew why they were called "Lighting". Endless flocks of Crows going somewhere to roost so many they would darken the sky.
Dick and Jane would be great friends but they lived in the city, they never were mad at each other, they shared the back seat of the family sedan and never fought over who got witch side, and never had to walk that mile and a quarter from the school bus stop to too the house at twenty below.
I was with my Dad "Virgil Dotson" in November of 194? We stopped at Four Mile School, lots of cars were parked around and he went inside without me. When he emerged I heard him talking to another man he said to that man, "I voted for the New Deal".
It was a bright warm November day on our Oklahoma farm the sky was a deep blue with waves of pretty white clouds floating across, high up. My Grandfather "S.W. Dotson" drove over in his "Brand New" 1941" Peagreen Ford Tudor " that my Father, and, his brothers had given him for Christmas. It was December the seventh 1941 and he said the "Jap's had bombed something".
All the family left in the excitement for a family meeting to descide who would go to war, I was left alone for some reason maybe in the excitement they just forgot about me. (For a short time,)( I enjoyed it.) While they were gone I turned on our battery-powered radio and it said that the Jap's had bombed something, the same thing my Grandfather had said.
Later my uncle Raymond Dotson came over and picked up my Sister and I and took us on a roundabout ride, in a farm truck to our Grand -mother and Grand-fathers Dotson country store (as in the Walton's) which was the head quaters for the family farms.
In 1942 my sister "Joyce Dotson" took me to Four Mile School with her I was an honored guest, It was an introduction tour to prepare me for the First Grade the following year .(She seemed pretty happy about it, she got to boss me around all day.(smile)
Four Mile School was a one room school with grades from one to four. It had a well and a pump for drinking water it was a square wood building needing paint with two out houses out back. Across the road there was a very small country store. A "Big Chief" writing tablet cost a nickel and a pencil cost a penny.
The school had no bell except for the hand held bell the teacher used. Inside the entrance were two cloke rooms for coats brown bag lunches and Golshers. The teachers desk was placed on the small one foot high stage. As she faced the class the light came from the left wall of windows the first grade was the first row on the left, the next three rows were the second, third and fourth grade. To the right of the fourth graders (the big kids) sat a very large pot bellied stove. My name Dotson put me in the front seat of the first grade next to the cold windows and the farthest from the stove.
In my opinion this was this best education in the world. I remember in that little school by watching the older kids I realised that if I could count to ten I could count forever it was a matter of starting over and calling it something else. I had discovered the decimal system in the first grade.
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