Southton School one of many rural schools

Southton School, one of many rural school buildings that history has forgotten.
Until the early 50s, there were hundreds of rural community schools across Texas. One such elementary school was located in Southton, Texas, a few miles off Highway 87 and Hilltop toward Floresville. I have sweet memories of attending second grade there. The school consisted of three rooms with two grades and one teacher to each room. The first graders were on one end of our room and the second graders on the other. Our teacher sat at the back corner of the room. Her name was Mrs. Williams. I well recall so many happy times there including friends who still live in my memory, even though I have seen few of them since elementary school. One friend was Terry who sat next to me.
Terry was a talker, and so am I, but I’m also a rule follower. So one time when the teacher admonished us not to talk and anyone who did would get a spanking, Terry started talking to me and I told him to hush and I got caught. Sometimes we just get in trouble when it’s not our fault.
I also recall being awarded the distinction of best reader! Go figure. That brings to mind a wonderful memory of the mobile library. That was so exciting and, Oh, what a joy it was to walk down the aisle in that portable library in awe as I took in the smell of the books and made my choices. My favorite books were about ballet and horses.
I walked or rode my bike to school every day. It was about a mile from our home. On more than one occasion, my big, beautiful, white dog, Butterball, would follow me, and I would have to coax him back home. But generally, I did not ride or walk alone. Several neighborhood children also walked and rode their bikes to school. One of my classmates who rode her bike alongside me was named Margie, a neighbor and such a good friend.
Another fond memory of living at Southton was the post office. It was around the corner from the school and sometimes after school I would go there to pick up our mail. The post office consisted of a regular house, and when you walked up onto the porch and you faced the front door, to the left was another door which had been converted to a window where the clerk/homeowner would hand you your mail.
After second grade, that school was closed like so many others across the state, and the building, unfortunately from a historical viewpoint, was torn down. A new school house named Harmony, which was just off of Highway 87 east of Hilltop, became the new, up-to-date, modern elementary school. I attended Harmony third through sixth grades.
East Central ISD encompasses 296 square miles. When I attended Harmony in third through sixth grades, I rode the bus for 5 miles from home. Then in seventh grade, I attended Oak Crest, which was an hour from Harmony. So I rode the bus from my house to Harmony where I changed buses and rode from Harmony to Oakcrest. It was quite a trip.
Oakcrest was a new building situated across the street from East Central High School. As I recall, it had four rooms, two for 7th and two for 8th grades. The principal was one of my teachers. A fun fact is for lunchtime all students boarded a school bus and we rode across the road – Sulphur Springs Highway – to the East Central high school cafeteria. At the end of lunch, we all piled back in the bus and rode back across the road.
Today, Oak Crest is an elementary school with an enrollment of around 680 students. Because we moved to San Antonio near the end of my seventh-grade year, I left Oak Crest and my humble rural school to attend Burbank, which was a 4A high school, equivalent to today’s 5A. The junior high was on the same campus as the high school, which made for an even larger population. Talk about culture shock. Yet, I like to think that I experienced the best of two worlds, small country schools as a child and big city school as a teen.
In keeping with this rural school theme, stay tuned next week to learn about Medina County’s Shook school.