May/June 2023 (Volume 15, Issue 3)

 

By Arvid Huisman

 

During my sixth-grade year I attended three different schools. I began the school year in Jewell, spent a short time in Sibley and then the final two months of classes in Kamrar, all in Iowa.

 

By the end of that year I was school-weary and was being tutored in math by a seventh-grade girl. Though being tutored by an older girl was okay, changing schools so often was stressful. Besides, I was missing my friends in Jewell.

 

When our family moved into the Kamrar school district in Hamilton County in the spring of 1960, we moved into the final years of a wonderful tradition. At the end of each school year, the Kamrar community — even those without children in school — gathered at Briggs Woods County Park several miles northwest of town for a school picnic. 

 

That 1960 picnic was a blessing for a school-weary 12-year-old.

 

My classmates’ enthusiasm for the upcoming picnic was contagious. A crowd had already gathered when we arrived at Shelter No. 1 late in the morning.

 

Kamrar was my father’s hometown and the East Frisian German influence was still strong in the community six decades ago. East Frisian family names which dominated the tiny Kamrar phone book at the time were well represented at the picnic — Klaver, Van Langen, Greenfield, Tempel, Koop, Hassebrock, Cordes, Schaa and Fonken to name a few. 

 

Of course, the community’s handful of Norwegians and neighbors of other ethnic backgrounds were there, too.

 

The Kamrar school picnic was a potluck affair and the picnic tables in Shelter No. 1 were loaded with some of the best cooking to be found anywhere. When the signal was given we lined up to load our plates. This was my kind of picnic — fried chicken, hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, casserole-upon-casserole and homemade pies of every description — all washed down with large quantities of Kool-Aid.

 

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