May 2, 2001
School Daz trip back in time
800 students attend annual event at Music House
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Like a trip in a time capsule, fifth and sixth grade students from East Bay Elementary School visited the Acme General Store Friday afternoon. Led by musicians and educators Donna Shugart and Mary Anne Rivers, the students learned about life 100 years ago. Everything from prices of goods to local history to a sample of country hospitality was covered in song and story, with students chiming in on the chorus.
"I learned that it was really cheap to buy things way back," said Ceili Mateer, sixth grade. "I really liked the singing about life back then."
The changes in the cost of living really struck the students, as Rivers and Shugart told students that a woman's dress cost $1, a man's suit $1.25, shoes were 50 cents and socks a dime. Coffee was ten cents a pound and eggs about ten cents a dozen.
"People were very, very frugal back then," Rivers said. "They would make clothes out of flour and sugar sacks. The companies would put designs on them because they knew that the people needed the fabric for clothes."
The contrast to the daily lives of students was stark.
"I learned about how much money things were and how much it changed," said Lindsay Medors, fifth grade.
Visiting the reproduction of the Acme General Store is just one of the highlights of School Daz, two-weeks of fun and activities at the Music House Museum that wound up Friday. Drawing more than 800 children from school districts in the five-county region, the second annual School Daz also gave students a tour of the Way Back Saloon, a chance to play the organ grinder and a visit to an old-fashioned movie theater where the listened to an automated violin player and a player piano.
Not everything in the tour focused on music. Farm tools and forgotten implements of daily life stumped the children. While someone guessed the handheld paddle butter churn and hair trimmer, no one guessed the toaster or chamber pot. The discovery the latter was greeted by a chorus of ‘Eews!´
“I liked learning about the tools,” said Ryan Throop, fifth grade.
School Daz kicked off the museum´s 19th season, the two weeks prior to its official opening. Museum officials began this program last year as a way to start their season by reaching out to area students, providing a musical history lesson and hoping to excite them about what the museum has to offer.
“We hope they will come back with their families,” said Dee Smith, marketing and education coordinator for the Music House Museum. “School Daz is a great program and it gets kids up here.”
Students also visited the basement workshop which houses the Miniature City replica of Traverse City from the 1930s. Restoring the buildings that were displayed outdoors at the Clinch Park Zoo for 40 years and then stored another 35 years is a huge undertaking. The replica gave museum volunteers the chance to give a lesson in the Great Depression and the history of the Civilian Conservation Corps program; members of which built the miniature buildings.
After a tour of Front Street, on a smaller scale, students had a chance to help restore some of the buildings currently being worked on. Wielding glue sticks, they all began affixing cardboard shingles to buildings, some finishing their roofs in the short time provided.
“School Daz fits in with the general mission of our museum: to educate,” said Dave Stiffler, director of the Music House Museum. “This program speaks to children and gives them a general history lesson, too.”