Remembering Maplewood School Desks
Nothing is quite like old-fashioned school classrooms with their rows of desks, blackboards attached to the wall and their interior air with a mélange of aromas of chalk dust and old varnished wood to bring back memories of school in autumn.
My husband’s elementary school years were in a red brick two-story building that included grades one through twelve, where his mom was also a teacher. “I pretty much had to toe the mark, which didn’t come easy. I didn’t care for school confinement,” he says.
John remembers the janitor preparing the school’s old-fashioned connecting desks for the new school year. During summer, the desks were made ready by completely refinishing all of the hard maple wood desks, rendering them like new for returning students.
Gouges in the wood were sanded out and where the surfaces were no longer repairable, the old worn out components were replaced with new maple wood replacement parts. As students grew taller, desk spacing on the connecting desk rails had to be adjusted to student height.
Most of the timeworn durable connecting desk units were made by American Seating of Grand Rapids who introduced them in 1886. The upper right corner of connecting desks had a circular hole cut-out.
Its original purpose for this was to hold an ink well for moist ink and pen writing. Even as a personal bottle of ink became obsolete, the standard hole in the desk top remained. Some circular holes held a cup for pencils.
Cast-iron and maple wood student desk-chair units were sturdy and stable. The hard maple wood was so sound, I know of a school that used the phased out desk wood in shop class for students to make kitchen cutting boards.
Desks like these are seldom found today. I was happy to discover a desk unit at Goodwill and eagerly purchased it.
The task of refinishing old school desks, the cost of supplies and labor, long ago made the job obsolete, but characterizes a time when things were made to last and school janitors were truly a jack of all trades.
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