TRAVEL TALES : SCHOOLHOUSE'S LESSON IN HISTORY.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

A hundred years ago, boys and girls at Timber School in Newbury Park sat on hard wooden benches, chalked their arithmetic problems on hand-held slates, and learned spelling and vocabulary from worn McGuffey's Readers.

Today, kids who visit the school - a reconstruction of the original 1889 schoolhouse - on field trips with their classes can study the same subjects.

``The teachers sit the kids down at the old desks and teach the same lessons kids learned in the 1890s, by the old-fashioned methods,'' said Miriam Sprankling, curator of history for the Stagecoach Inn Museum. The new/old schoolhouse is part of the inn's complex of historic buildings.

Elementary school classes visit the school on Wednesday mornings to experience the partial school day of pioneer children. Sprankling said they never fail to marvel that the children in those days usually brought their lunches in old lard cans, washing up was done in a basin just inside the schoolhouse door (with separate towels for girls and boys, laundered once a week), drinks of water were dipped from a bucket and the restroom was two outhouses - one for boys, one for girls - behind the schoolhouse. (The outhouses were not rebuilt.)

But the adults - many of them seniors - who visit the schoolhouse are the ones who seem to appreciate it the most, Sprankling said.

``Older people just love it,'' she said. ``They come in and some of them just stand here and tears come into their eyes and they say, `I went to a school just like this.' ''

The reconstructed schoolhouse was dedicated in May 1995. It was built from 1991 through 1994 a short distance from the site of the original school by 43 students at nearby Newbury Park High School and their teacher, Randy Porter.

The original school's first teachers taught 42 children of all ages and in all grades.

The rebuilt school building can hold 20 children at antique double desks, the children sitting on hard benches and writing on attached desktops; slates and readers are stored under the desktops.

Portraits of the nation's heroes - presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln - decorate the front of the spare classroom. Sprankling said the two likenesses are copies of originals that used to hang in the school. Above them hangs a narrow banner depicting, in flowing script, the alphabet; it provided an example for penmanship classes.

The blackboard below the banner was salvaged from an old Santa Paula school.

In the back of the schoolhouse stands an old organ that accompanied the church congregations that used the school as a meeting hall on Sundays. A sect that called itself the Dunkards had services in the schoolhouse, baptizing new members in the creek across the road.

As in the original, the new schoolhouse has two cloakrooms - one for boys, one for girls - with hooks for hanging coats and hats, and shelves for holding lunches. The girl's cloakroom also includes a tiny photo museum showing early students who attended the original Timber School, a few teachers, a roster of teachers and their salaries (the first earned $40 a month; by 1929, the teachers' salary had risen to $1,425 a year).

Many of the items were preserved for decades by ``some wonderful person'' - museum officials have never found out who it was - who one night left a box filled with schoolhouse memorabilia at the museum, Sprankling said.

``The box was filled with wonderful things,'' she said. ``It even had the original attendance register from the school from 1892 to 1894.''

Among the items was a sales receipt for $85.35, the amount paid by rancher Adolph Friedrich for the old school building in 1925, the year a newer, larger school building was erected. The old school was torn down and the wood used to build barns and sheds.

The boys' cloakroom is much the same as the girls', except for the knotted length of rope dangling from a hole in the ceiling. That rope reaches to the belltower above, and a strong tug rings the bell that is an exact replica of the original $30 bell from Timber School - except the replica cost $5,000. But the sound peals out over the neighboring hillsides just as it did over 100 years ago, as if still calling children to classes.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Inside the re-created Timber School in Newbury Park, Miriam Sprankling holds an original attendance roster for the facility, which was first built in 1889.

Carol Bidwell/Daily News

Box: Taking a trip back in time (See Text)