Old Farmin School won't be forgotten

(Recently, I walked by the site of the old Farmin School (Second and Main in Sandpoint). Like many who now live in Sandpoint, I never saw the school and I missed an experience that others still cherish. I have often heard, “That building should never have been torn down.” I realized seeing the real thing was impossible but I could vicariously walk the halls with someone who had attended the old school. I recalled talking with the late L.G. “Bud” Moon who remembered the school with great pleasure. I want to share with you his memories, in his own words with some editing due to space limitations, about the place called Farmin.)

“I went to the old Farmin school down where the bank is now in town. Farmin School was three stories and it had a gymnasium on the top floor. My father also went to Farmin School. It was high school and the grade school. He had great stories about playing basketball in that gymnasium up there. They’d dribble the ball around and they used to delight in running the opposing team into the chimneys that were on both sides of the sidelines. If they could scrape off a guy on a chimney they could make a pass up the floor a lot easier. They finally had to quit and not hold athletic events because it was shaking the whole building apart.

“I started the first grade there. My first grade teacher was named Nell K. Irion and her husband had the local title company. Anyway, Nell, I should say Mrs. Irion, was the teacher and she was unnaturally a leftie by genetic bent and she would not tolerate left-handed kids in her class. We all got whacked with the ruler if we picked up the pencil so I now write right-handed but I can write equally well with my left hand. Anyway, that was the method in those days.”

“In grade school we all learned to read and write and we also learned discipline very quickly. It was mandatory that we pay attention. I remember Charlie Stidwell was the principal and he was a young man in those days. Charlie had a very commanding appearance. The second day I was in school, the door banged open to the classroom and this huge man stood there with his arms folded and with his head back and glaring at the kids. There was no messing around as far as the kids went and if you got sent out in the hall for being disruptive you were in trouble. In the class, you quaked in your boots because if Charlie came down the stairs, Mr. Stidwell, it was like the end of the world. On his bookcase in his office, in the principal’s office, he had a rubber hose and everybody knew that if you were bad, he would get the rubber hose out and give you a whipping. The funny thing was that after you got to be an adult and you got to know Charlie Stidwell you knew that hose never came out of the bookcase.”

“He was quite a guy. In fact, Charlie’s reign included two of my daughters in junior high. When Charlie would come into a room that had been a group meeting or a dance or something, he would hold up his fingers like they do in the Boy Scouts, you know, and he wouldn’t say a word. He’d just hold his fingers up like that and everybody immediately quit talking. I think they need more Charlie Stidwells in the schools these days. Anyway, he was a magnificent fellow.”

“Charlie was also involved in the Boy Scouts. He had Troop 1 and he was one of these guys who really participated. They used to go on hikes and did camp outs and that sort of thing. In retrospect, we had a lot of fun but we had a lot of discipline and I don’t think that the discipline inhibited us in any way and it didn’t warp our little personalities. We got along just fine but we certainly knew right from wrong.”

“I remember one recess, swinging really high like everybody tried to do and then bail out. I’d waited until it was too high and I remember coming down and spread-eagling on the ground. It took me probably about two minutes to get my breath back. I never did that again. It was great fun.”

“It was a sad day when they tore it down (Farmin School) because that was home to all of us kids during the school year. It was a massive building and they had a hard time tearing it down.”