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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Wingham Advance-Times, 1975-02-20, Page 190 • • • 0 • Crossroads the weekly bona* in your li;towei Bonner, Wingbnin Advance - Times and Mount Forest Confe- derate is read by 33,299 people in the "heartland of Midwestern Ontario". ( Based on 3.5 readers in each of 9,500 homes.) Published every week in The Listowel Banner, The Wingham Advance -Times and The Mount Forest Confede\'rate by Wenger Bros. Limited. —Crossroads --February 20, 1975— The role has been changed for the country school house They used to be schoolhouses, rectangular blocks with chim- neys, perched on lonely spots be- side roads, monuments to archi- tectural bankruptcy. Inside, the only partitions were washrooms in the back, one for the boys and one for the girls, whether they Were learning or teaching. At least, that's how they were when they were closed down. Old timers have additional details, one of them being the outhouse. In any case, to those schools children went, using the trans- portation of their times: by horse and buggy, on horses, on bare backs of ponies and, yes, even by cars, but- mostly on foot. Old timers like relating, with great nostalgia, that long walk from the farm to the schoolhouse in knee-deep snow, eyes fixed on the schoolhouse chimney for wreathing smoke, hoping the boy whose duty it was to start the fire • RELICS= -Mr. and Mrs. Antony Christie,' Ayton Road, have chosen to leave a large portion of the original main floor free of partitions. Among the relics are desks on which Miranda and Alice play. 0 Y • hadn't slept in. With one teacher, often a woman, the boys and girls learned to read and write. They read literature and recited poetry by heavenly poets like Isaiah and worldly ones like Wordsworth. They studied the history of by- gone civilizations, memorized names and dates of famous bat- tles and the generals who won or lost them. They studied geography, memorized the names of moun- tain ranges and the longest rivers and heard of peoples from other lands, some of whom had • horri- fying attributions. With occasional interruptions from the teacher's strap, they courted their future wives and husbands. But more '.mportant, their minds and spirits were set on courses they were to follow all their lives. Some went back to the farms to grow wheat and corn and to breed cattle, sheep and hogs. They also raised children who, in turn, went to the old schoolhouse, there to set their own course in life. Others decided to seek their fortunes beyond the farms and went on to become engineers, educators, politicians, warriors,. businessmen, ministers and, yes, even "banditos". The old schoolhouses are no more and they were sold at give-away prices. But as if in defiance of the .times, the old schoolhouses stand on lonely spots besideroads, chimneys gazing at the sky and with hardly a wreath or smoke. Into them have moved as great an assortment of characters as once walked in and out of their doors with happy or sad memo- ries. Depending on their empera- ments and tastes, the Ceu- pants are disfiguring the old . houses in their attempts to make them homes. ., Some people just get plywood and divide the main floor into rooms; others spend a little money and with cheap, ordinary material creatively turn them into unique homes; others spend a lot of money and transform them into over a hundred thousand dollar homes. But they unmistakenly remain the old schoolhouse. For Weekends Mrs. Antony Christie, Ayton Road, stares at the ceiling, clasps her hands and raises them to her chin. Except for the kitchen and the washroom, the main floor is just as it was. Her two children, Alice and Miranda, are playing on two CONVENTIONAL—Using the best material available on .the market, Alvin Stevens, RR 1, Londesboro, and a car- penter by profession, has turned a schoolhouse into an ex- pensive conventional home. There are three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a Targe sitting room, a dining room and kitchen on the original main floor. Attached to the original structure is a two -car garage. Mr. Stevens has remodelled 22 homes. of the original desks in one cor- ner. Mrs. Christie is trying to answer the question: Why move into an old schoolhouse? She looks around: one big room, couches, chairs, a small old stove and books all over (her husband is a teacher) . She slaps her hands against herasides and laughs. "Why not?" Then she explains. They lived in a regular house in Mount Forest and bought the school- house for staying overnight and on weekends. "But a regular house is just too ordinary," she says. The window panes were miss- .. ing, the maple floor needed strip- ping and the walls were plain latex. "The fun of it was renovating," she says. The result is three bedrooms upstairs. They are small because the Christies didn't want to inter- fere with the original ceiling above the large room they used for living. To install the bedrooms, they had to lower the ceiling—the original ceiling—and build an- other, slightly higher. Mrs. Christie points at the staircase. "We exchanged our stereo for that." "By the way," she laughs, as the visitor is leaving. "Did you hear about my husband digging the well?" She hesitates. "With me pulling the bucket of soil." They gave up after 20 feet, yvhich was just as well. The water Vitas 100 feet .,below. Well Constructed Down in Monkton, Ralph Seip talked about his home, the old union school. The original section was built in 1928. That's the one he talks about with subdued emo- tion. "We liked the architecture," he says. "It's unique." There used to' be. two class- rooms on the main floor. He and his wife, Diane, now have three bedrooms, a dining room, a kit- chen, bathroom and a den. They bought the builaing in 1967 but didn't move in until 1968. They spent the year renovating the building. The newer part of the building. looks 'just like any modern school building and the Seips use it as a "shop". In it is a collection of Mrs. Seip's antiques, mainly glass- ware. But there are to be found cabinets dating back to the 17th century, muskets, looms and even rare books. The living quarters in the old schoolhouse are also filled with antiques, including an Italian Palace couch that, when import- ed, cost $7,000. But it's the living in the house that interested Mr. and Mrs. Seip in buying the building. "As far as living space is con- cerned," he says, "it compares very vr►'ell with the homes they are building now. Only it's better constructed." Housed Livestock In the summer of 1973, Wolfgang Schedler and his wife were jtist driving when they saw a schoolhouse at a place formerly known as Ebenezer Corner, now RR 2, Blyth. They liked it. But the farmer who owned it wasn't interested in selling it. And for good reasons. He had 60 pigs in the basement and 60. tons of corn on the main floor. But the Schedlers liked living in the country better than they liked living in Toronto, where Mr. Schedler was an engraver. So, they persuaded the farmer to sell it to them, and he finally did. "We are Christian people," Mr. Schedler says, "and always prayed for' a place of our own without getting in debt." They have it now and it's built to their taste. The main floor is divided into two bedrooms and a large kit- chen -dining room -sitting room combination. The walls are panelled with regular panelling. But one side is panelled with barnboards. "We paid a lot of money for them;" Mr. Schedler chuckles. "Yes," says his wife, "five dollars." Please turn to Page 2 Feature and photos by Chege Mbitiru MUSEUM—Ralph and Diane Seip of Monkton have turned the old union school into a museum as a part of Mrs. Seip's interest in antiques. They have three bedrooms, a living room and a den on the main floor of the old part of the building that accommodated two classes. It is the architecture they like and the building is weirconstructed, Mr. Seip says. 1 CONTEMPLATING—Ralph Seipcontemplates on a beautiful old Italian Palace settee' —that cost $7,000 when it was imported—in the sitting room of the old' union school in Monkton that he and his wife Diane have made into a home. COZY—Using the cheapest material available, Wolfgang Schedler has turned an old schoolhouse into a cozy home. The building at RR 2, Blyth has two bedrooms and a large kitchen on the main floor. He't contemplating making the basement into a recation room. He and his wife heat their home with an old wood stove.