But as a member of the Happy Homemakers club - a dwindling group of women in their 70s or 80s - she’s devoted to preserving the 100-year-old schoolhouse, which serves as community center for the west end of Mineral County.
“We need help,” said Mesenbrink, 84, who has lived in DeBorgia longer than all but a few townfolk. “I’d definitely like to see more community involvement.”
By World War II, most of the little clapboard buildings - with their ubiquitous pot-bellied stoves and school bells ringing in the cupola or the fist of a schoolmarm - had closed as students rode modern buses to consolidated school districts.
Since then, many one-room schools have been torn down or moldered into the ground, although nearly 30 still operate in remote areas - including two in Montana - where they are symbols of early education in the United States, according to the One-Room Schoolhouse Center, a national nonprofit group.
Some one-room schools have been restored and converted to other uses, such as museums, inns, private homes and community centers.
In DeBorgia, the “one-room” schoolhouse never had one room. Built in 1908, the two-story structure had one teacher but two rooms - one up and one down - for reasons that seem to have been forgotten.
“I was too dumb to ask the old-timers before they died or moved away,” said Mesenbrink.
The schoolhouse was erected in a narrow mountain corridor that once was a busy crossroads of Native American trails, the Mullan Trail, the Milwaukee and Pacific Northern railroads and old Highway 10.
The “Big Burn,” a massive wildfire that hit the Northern Rockies in 1910, destroyed nearly all buildings in DeBorgia, Haugan and Saltese. The DeBorgia schoolhouse is the only building still standing from that time.
Mesenbrink and her late husband, Ken, both Iowa natives, moved to DeBorgia in 1948 after he had served in World War II. He worked in a lumber mill and for the railroad. The family also owned the DeBorgia general store for more than 20 years.
The schoolhouse served students in grades one through eight until it closed in 1956 because most children were traveling to St. Regis to attend school.
The Mesenbrinks sent their older children to St. Regis schools because they thought they would get a more rounded education there.
The DeBorgia schoolhouse was little used until 1969 when the Happy Homemakers, “a small group of spirited ladies, assumed responsibility for maintenance and preservation of the building,” according to the National Register of Historic Places plaque on the schoolhouse wall.
Since then, the building has added electricity, heating, bathrooms and a kitchen. The first-floor room has been restored for community use. The upstairs is used for storage.
Memorabilia on display include blackboards, inkwells, a penmanship booklet and a “Moral Code for School Children” from 1925.
Outside on the two-acre grounds are a picnic pavilion and an old outhouse with a double wooden seat worn smooth.
Mineral County owns and insures the schoolhouse, but the Happy Homemakers, which is a community support group, raises money for the building’s upkeep.
They sell homemade apple pies, host spaghetti dinners, solicit donations of goods and services, and plan to have a quilt raffle soon. A centennial celebration for the schoolhouse is planned this fall.
But the Happy Homemakers say they need help. They are down to four active members: Mesenbrink, Grace Hauble, Norma Hansen and Beth Robertson.
“These ladies, they’re doing a wonderful job, but they’re at the age that they need some more help from the community,” said Joan Kellen, who like Mesenbrink works part time at the U.S. Forest Service’s Savenac Nursery in DeBorgia.
Carole Johnson, a Superior Ranger District recreation specialist in the Lolo National Forest, agreed.
“If the Happy Homemakers dissolve, we could lose our community center,” she said.
Mesenbrink said it doesn’t take much to join the Happy Homemakers.
“A strong back and a weak mind,” she said, chuckling. “Oh, and you have to pay the dues.”
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)