Stories of South Dakota form the heart of the South Dakota Humanities Council's one-of-a-kind series, featuring the words of your South Dakota friends and neighbors.

From One Room Country School: "The School Board should have warned me that I needed to come to my job with an axe because one was not provided. They did well to fill the coal bin with good, big chunks of coal and scrap lumber for kindling. But neither coal nor wood would fit in the stove. I solved this problem by taking the coal out to huge rocks in the yard and dropping it on the rocks and ducking quickly so I wouldn’t get coal splinters in my eyes. I propped the wood against the cement step and jumped on it several times to get it small enough for kindling. I tried banking the fire to keep a little heat in the stove till morning, but oh, oh, those cold, cold Monday mornings." - Winifred Bertrand Fawcett