Something from Aunt Sarah

In the tiny (pop. 100) community of Blue Hole, tucked away in the Clay County mountains of Kentucky, everyone knows Widow Sarah Collett, and everyone calls her "Aunt." She is a kindly, grey-haired woman of 75 who has so many kinfolks in town that she can claim to be the grandmother, great-aunt, or at least a cousin of every boy and girl in the local one-room school. It was only natural that, with all her relatives, Aunt Sarah should be worried about the school.

It was nothing but a drafty old shack set up on rickety stilts. It was so dilapidated that when a new teacher arrived last fall, she took one look at it and hurried away to Cincinnati. Last month all 30 pupils went out on strike. They would not return, they said, until they got a new building.

Blue Hole parents petitioned state officials in vain for a new school. The superintendent said that their problem was "a local affair" and referred them to the county board. The county said that it could not build a new school because there was no land available with a clear title, and the old site on the mountainside was too dangerous. Then, one night, a great storm blew up. Next morning the old schoolhouse was a pile of lumber at the bottom of the creek, and there was still no prospect of a new one.

At that point, Aunt Sarah decided that something would have to be done. "My children," said she, "ain't got no learnin', and I shore want my grandchildren to get some." So Aunt Sarah gave Blue Hole the most valuable thing she had in the world besides her house--half an acre of land with a clear title. The county promptly announced that it would start building a new school at once, and last week, as the walls began to rise, Aunt Sarah found herself a celebrity. When reporters arrived to interview her, they found her shuffling happily about, her wrinkled old face wreathed in smiles. "I don't look too good," said she, as she smoothed down her tattered sweater. "But it don't matter how a person looks just as long as they are all right inside."

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