Kingman Teacherage

Years ago my mother and I spent a year living in this Kingman, Alberta "teacherage" - a tiny one-room house without electricity or plumbing! It was the 1950s. I was in first grade, and my mother was teaching home economics (sewing and cooking) for the first time. She had moved to a new school 23 km [14 miles] down the road from Hay Lakes, the village where we lived.

I'm not sure why we lived in Kingman when it was only a few miles from our home. My guess is that my mother didn't drive or that our family didn't own a second vehicle. My father, who put in long hours at his garage, would have been unable to take us every morning and pick us up at night. So from Monday to Friday we lived here, while my father and two-year-old brother stayed in Hay Lakes, cared for by Oma Domke, my father's mother.

Living in a teacherage was not new to my mother. She had lived alone in one next to every one-room country school she had taught in before she got married and moved to Hay Lakes. Teacherages were provided in rural settings as part of teachers' salaries. Living next door to the school meant that they could also fulfill other responsibilities - like cleaning the school and lighting the wood stove.















I came across this picture in a photo album while looking for a prairie scene to draw in pen and ink. Not surprisingly, we have few pictures of buildings or scenes - photos were expensive to develop and our family focused on pictures of people.

As I study the photo, memories come back: the shiny checkered oil cloth table cloth on the table in the center of the room, the pump outdoors where we pumped water into a bucket. The little outhouse at the edge of the picture, a short run away. I also notice a few things that never occurred to me as a child: The porch seems to be a new addition. The house itself is built on the foundation of a few flat rocks, visible at the corners - and the front step has several wooden boards underneath to level it.

I don't notice any wires going into the building. Did we light it with a coal-oil lamp? Very possibly. I don't remember. I think we had a wood stove for cooking and heating. Yet living there didn't seem like a hardship.

(There were some happy times!)

During that year, my father sold his garage business. The following school year found us in a modern house in Red Deer. (By modern, I mean we had electricity and running water!)

As I look at the old photo, I am struck by the barrenness of the landscaping - no bushes, trees or flowers in sight! What a soul-less little home!