Steps through time
Margaret Evans stands in the corner of her studio on a muggy Friday afternoon – back straight, shoulders back – she cues the CD player and shouts, “Five, six, seven eight and off you go.” Nine girls – some in dusty-bottomed- socks, others in metal platted black dance shoes – follow after her. Their feet pound on the ancient ironwood floor in sync to the Irish folk music streaming from the surrounding speakers. The girls stare at their reflections in the tilted mirrors.
“If you ever wonder what it felt like to be inside a popcorn machine this is it,” Evans, who owns the Kelly Irish Dancers group in Chattaroy, yells above the clapping shoes.
But hers is no ordinary recital hall.
The dancers are tapping away inside the Valley Prairie Grange Hall. Chairs that date back to the early 1900s line the back wall of the studio – but a disco ball and strobe light hang from the ceiling. The original rolling countertop from 1925 still sits in the back, but now a running sink and a stack of Styrofoam cups stand next to it.
A glowing exit sign sits on top of the doorframe, but the windows lining the walls are made from a type of glass you can’t get anymore.
Eighty-four years ago the Valley Prairie Grange was the schoolhouse Hazel Rhodes walked two-and-a-half miles to get to every day. It’s where she played “stealing sticks” and a good game of ball with her schoolmates during recess.
Built in 1910, Valley Prairie was the closest school for the Baker family, who lived in the Colbert area.
Rhodes and her siblings, including her sister Mabel, got up at 5 a.m., finished their morning chores and walked to school in time for the morning bell to ring.
“We would cut through all the fields otherwise there was no way we could have made it. Even in the snow – it’s like we would make our own trail – we would plow right through the snow,” said Rhodes, who’s 96.
Growing up on a farm taught her discipline. She was the youngest of 10 siblings – eight girls and two boys – born to French and Swiss immigrants.
“Hazel spent a lot of years on that farm,” said Denny Patterson, great-nephew of Hazel’s and Mabel’s, who recalls the stories of walking to school in rain and snow.
“You know, I always used to make that up for me,” said Patterson, “but in her case, that was real.”
Rhodes won perfect attendance and she still has her certificates to show.
“Oh, it was rough getting there, but I always liked school,” said Rhodes with a smile.
Today, the building is a far cry from a schoolhouse – the only thing taught at Valley Prairie is basic Irish step dance. It’s been like that since Carl and Margaret Evans bought the building in 2000.
At the time, they knew they had an old building, but they didn’t know that it came with a hidden piece of local history.
While removing a large bee hive from the inside of the east wall in 2001, Carl Evans discovered a piece of paper and two religion study cards. The copyright date on the cards was 1917, and the piece of paper was a math assignment with the name “Mabel Baker” scribbled on the corner.
“I thought of her, wondering who she was and what she was like,” he wrote in a journal he has kept since the purchase of the building. “I felt as if someone was trying to communicate with me from the past.”
Then a woman showed up with a photograph from 1917 showing children lined up in front of the schoolhouse.
The Evanses admit to being history buffs and antique geeks – their home, on the hilltop next to the schoolhouse, is decorated with old license plates, clocks, a Remington typewriter from the 1930’s, an old viewfinder, antique coffee tins and more.
So driving to the state Archives in Cheney and checking old censuses from 1910 to 1932 was enjoyable.
“We were being detectives,” said Margaret Evans, who brought her three daughters to the downtown Spokane Library to scan through microfilm from the 1900s. After calling every Baker in the area, she said the second or third Baker led them to Hazel, Mabel Baker’s sister.
“I wasn’t too surprised to hear from them,” said Lyle Baker, great-nephew to Hazel and Mabel. But he and his wife Jean were not aware the Valley Prairie Grange had been sold.
They remembered the Grange as a place for dances Saturday nights.
The Evanses have heard many stories about the grange hall parties. They’ve even had locals point out where a large brawl took place in front of the grange.
“From what I can piece together, the grange was where some of the wildest parties took place,” said Carl Evans.
It turned out Mabel Baker was still alive at a local retirement center. But Lyle Baker recommended the couple talk to Hazel Rhodes, Baker’s younger sister, as Mabel Baker was diagnosed with dementia.
“The first thing I said when I met Rhodes was, ‘I came here to let you know that your sister’s math assignment is overdue,’ ” said Carl Evans. Rhodes was able to point to nearly every student in the 1917 photograph and name all of her classmates.
Two summers ago, Patterson brought Rhodes and Baker to the schoolhouse. Rhodes said the schoolhouse hasn’t changed too much on the outside.
“One thing that is the same is the school bell,” she said. The bell was cast by the Ohio Bell Co. in 1909. It was nearly auctioned off to raise money for the Green Bluff Junior Grange. But the Evanses knew they had to have the bell with the building. Margaret Evans had to make the last bid for the bell for $1,750 to hold on to it.
“It gave the building so much character and charm, and it’s always been there. This valley has always had that sound (of the bell) in it – we need to have it for 90 more years.”
Margaret Evans does get perks with owning her own 97-year-old bell. “Now we ring it whenever we want, because we can,” she said.
Rhodes and the Evanses hope to see the grange hall restored to its original 1910 glory.
“I want to enhance the building,” said Carl Evans. In addition to finishing the hall, he plans to create a model train museum in the basement of the building as well as an agricultural-themed dining room.
They are hoping to have the building ready and fixed for its 100th anniversary, but the couple said there is still much to do. A crack in the foundation needs to be fixed, the original door needs to be cleaned and reinstalled, the back fire exit needs to be rebuilt, a new, sturdier roof must be mounted and the stairs need to be reinstated.
Still, the owners say that the repairs can be done. “It’s just a matter of time and money,” said Carl Evans.
Recently the local Mormon Church offered to power wash and paint the exterior of the building.
In addition to the new rooms, the couple plan to create a display case in the entrance of the grange dedicated to the students and the history of the schoolhouse. Margaret Evans plans to put a chalkboard on the wall with the names of the students and teachers who went to school at Valley Prairie.
While this is the first time the grange has beenprivately owned, the couple say that it does not mean they will keep it all to themselves. They rent the hall to interested parties and visitors continue to stop by, talking about when the building was a grange.
“We want to get people back in the building,” said Carl Evans, adding that he feels that the refurbishments to the building will bring life back into the grange, but that it’s the people who use the grange that will really make it come alive. “It’s still a dead building until you put a soul into it,” he said.
The couple hope to eventually put the building on the historic register.
Meeting the sisters Hazel Rhodes and Mabel Baker has motivated Margaret Evans to pursue its history and organize its restoration. “It makes it so personal – we are closing the generation gap so much here,” she said.
She has even considered sending a request to ABC’s “Extreme Home Makeover” television show to help complete the restoration. But she laughs at the idea. “It’ll get done,” she said, “it was just meant to be.”
Last year, Mabel Baker died, but the couple hopes that Rhodes will be around to see the finished grange hall – after all, she has a perfect attendance record to maintain.