Thin Ice!

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Friday, January 27, 1911. Went to school this morning and about the first thing I heard was our teacher breaking through the ice, while skating last night. We had visitors at school this afternoon. Guess I’ll stop now.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Whew, it’s lucky that her teacher Jakie apparently wasn’t hurt in the skating accident.  I guess the creek wasn’t frozen solid enough for safe skating.

It amazed me how informally Grandma referred to her teacher as Jakie in previous diary entries—and this entry also suggests that Jakie may have been a very young teacher who hung out with the students.