Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 4, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the 1830s and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the fourth in a series. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes Her Tune. Volume II was Isaac and Wolf Paw Find Their Home. Volume III was Autumn Keeps Her Secret.
School is stupid. What if they don’t like me? Why do I have to go? How can I be stuck inside on a day like this? If I were Wyandot I wouldn’t have to go. Why do I have to live here? What was wrong with Mt. Vernon? I already know enough. Why can’t I just walk around with Shining Star and Mudeater?
Philip was not happy that his parents had moved him to a new farm so far north in Richland County. They had left the other farm south of Fredericktown in the hands of his older brothers and their new families, and he had been the only one to come along with his parents.
He felt alone even when he was working with his Father on clearing land and building the cabin and barn. He was happy that he could do so many jobs that grown men could do, and was proud of how big a log he could move, split and carry.
But now, his parents wanted him to go to school, and there he did not feel at home. He didn’t want to make new friends, or at least he didn’t think they would want him as a friend, and he wished he could just live like an Indian, even on the Wyandot reservation over in Upper Sandusky.
He figured they had the best kind of life. That is because he had just met two Wyandot boys along the Black Fork a week earlier. They had been kind to him and had shown him how they trap squirrels and rabbits.
I don’t even know how to get there. I probably will go the wrong way and be lost for months. Or maybe I should just wander away and end up with the Wyandots. Wonder how long it would take them to find me. I’ll bet the teacher is real mean. Heard it was a lady. They’re worse than men. She’ll be old and big and snarling and probably hit me with a big stick, and for nothing.
I don’t know why I have to go.
Still, Philip kept walking. He had been to school the last two winters, and his older sister, before she left to get married, taught him to read the year before that.
I know everything I need to know already. I can read, I can count, and I know the Presidents, all eight of them. I even know there’ll be a new one after this fall’s election. Ol’ Andy Jackson will head back to Tennessee. See, I even know where Tennessee is. I know all 25 states, including that new one, Arkansomething.
Philip stared down the road. He saw the mill just ahead, to the east. He stood motionless, literally deciding his next step.
Well, I found it. If I go on, I’m stuck there all day, and probably all year, but if I don’t make it there, I can make something up and spend the day in the woods. Catch me a couple rabbits. Live like an Indian.
As he stood there, suddenly two girls came into view at the front of the mill. Before he could jump for cover, they looked up his road and spotted him.
Too late, they see me. They’ll know I was coming. Don’t even know who they are, but they are close enough they would recognize me another time. He sighed. Well, here I come. Guess I have to gamble on this school.
