Nicholson School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. Out here in Collingsworth County, there was once a school at the heart of a thriving agricultural community, and the story of how it rose and fell is the kind of thing this land has a way of keeping quiet about, until someone stops long enough to listen. The school was named for a county judge, Arthur Clyde Nicholson, and it opened in 1915, during his term.

Now, that's not a small thing. You name a school for a man, you're saying something about the faith a community is placing in its own future. And for a good while, that faith looked well-placed.

Nicholson School grew. It kept growing. More students came, so more teachers came, more classrooms got added.

By 1929, the enrollment had climbed all the way to one hundred and fifty students. One hundred and fifty children, out here on the Texas plains, learning what they needed to learn. That is a community humming.

But you know how these stories tend to go. The same land that draws people together has a way of shifting on them. Consolidation with other rural schools began in 1934, and once that process started, it moved with the slow certainty of something that cannot be stopped.

By 1937, it was finished. The last classes at Nicholson School were held, and that was that. What's left today, near this very site, is a concrete cellar.

That's it. One concrete cellar, sitting out here in the quiet, the last thing remaining of the original school property. A whole community's worth of hope and arithmetic and muddy boots, and what the ground kept is a cellar.

Texas has a talent for monuments like that.

What the marker says

Once the center of a thriving agricultural community, Nicholson School was named for county judge Arthur Clyde Nicholson, during whose term the school was opened in 1915. As Nicholson School increased in enrollment, reaching a peak of 150 students in 1929, additional teachers and classrooms were added. Consolidation with other rural schools began in 1934 and was completed in 1937, when the last classes at Nicholson School were held. A concrete cellar near this site is all that remains of the original school property. (1984)