Immanuel Lutheran School, Hermansberg, Kansas

Immanuel Lutheran School, out all alone among the farms, is where my wife and her siblings received their elementary education. All the children of her brother who took over the farm went there, too. It operated for 127 years until the rural population became too small to support it. Hermansberg isn't really a town. It may have been once but now it's just an area in the countryside. Tiny Bremen (see yesterday's post) is the nearest cluster of homes. The school is preserved as a museum by the still-active church where the family reunion was held Sunday. I'd never been in it before. About these images (click to enlarge):

Top: the California Test of Mental Maturity (whatever that means - and do they have mental maturity in California?) my wife took on October 23, 1953 when she was nine. I don't know about her mental maturity. She married me.

Top row of composite: left and right, school books from years past. Note the books in German. The population were mostly immigrants from the north of Germany (hence Bremen and Hanover) and my wife's grandparents spoke German at home. My father-in-law was pretty impressed that I could recite the Lord's Prayer in German, even though I learned it in a Catholic high school. Center, a brief note from my nephew Tom (the one who more or less saved my life last Friday night - see Saturday's post) about his opinion on the local education system.

Bottom row of composite: left, the sign outside the school. Right, one of the two schoolrooms.

WHAT I WANT TO APOLOGIZE FOR: how few comments I have left on your blogs lately, particularly those of you who have been so kind as to leave comments on mine. I've been exploring new dimensions in overwork in my day job and getting these posts together with duct tape and twine.

TOMORROW: back to the Thursday Arch Series, postcard version, not artsy.