Burt School, Mrs. Robertson, and the end of the steam era

I have always loved a particular little brick building I Burt Michigan.  Burt Elementary School housed grades K-2 when I attended in the late 1950s, and it was less than a decade before that the school was K-8, all in one little building...then came the Baby Boom and directly across the road was build the "new school" of three more rooms, grades 3-8.

The old school two big classrooms, one on each side of the building, and a third middle-sized room directly beneath the stubby bell-tower.

There was also a mysterious furnace-room in the rear of the kindergarten room, that was forbidden territory, though I did get a glimpse through the door once when the Boo Radley-like custodian was getting a shovel or something.

The building was surrounded by a huge "playground"...all grass and huge hardwood trees, mostly maple and oak. That custodian would rake up mountainous heaps of leaves that he'd let us play in before he burned them (I wonder if he checked for stray kids).

About two-hundred yards from the kindergarten side were the tracks of the C&O Railroad; a huge wall of windows faced those tracks. Twice a day the steam locomotive went barreling through and all of us would rush the windows to watch the spectacle. It was a regular thing...our dear Mrs. Robertson didn't even try and restore order, she knew that there was nothing so compelling as a locomotive with all of the smoke and steam and the long shrill whistle...usually she was at the window with us.

In second grade we were in the opposite side of the building, and sometime during that year, C&O switched over to all diesel, the end of the steam era in our area. 

I'm glad that I have the memory of twice-daily experiences with steam locomotives, and of a much beloved teacher.