We have had snow on the ground in northern Ohio since Christmas, and today we are getting another good dusting. It isn't as bad as last year - at least not yet. Then, we had over a foot of snow on the ground for nearly three months, and about a year ago in the middle of that, I was out in Holmes County to see how Amish people there were coping with the snow and cold, and I got this photo of a new parochial school on Salt Creek Township Lane 601, just south of Fredericksburg, Ohio.
This is a fairly typical Amish school, though it is newer than most. There is an outhouse in the background, and the two-room schoolhouse sports its only plumbing on the outside, at the front left corner - namely a simple hand spigot. Note also the typical belfry and the chimney for the wood-burning stove. This school also has an anteroom or mudroom for coats and boots, with the single classroom making up the rest of the building. This is one of the newer schools in the area. Its close neighbor Leeper School has been there since the thirties, and with the Amish population in Holmes County growing as it is, I expect there will someday be another school nearby.
But have a closer look at the left front corner of the school. See the sleds? Right. The Amish kids take sleds to school these days. Did you ever do that? Like me, you may have ridden a bicycle to school, but I doubt you took your sled. There might be twelve to fifteen scholars attending this new school, and there are six sleds left outside in the snow. So, that's a good percentage of the kids in this neighborhood who thought having a sled at school was a good idea. Take a sled to school? If you were Amish, you wouldn't think anything of it.
