So opens Schoolhouses of Minnesota, a magical foray into the nearly forgotten world of one-acre school grounds, kerosene lanterns, coal-burning stoves, and old desks that eventually had sixty years' worth of initials scraped into them. In the fourth book in his popular Minnesota Byways series, photographer Doug Ohman once again treats readers to the fruits of his state travels -- including a trip to Minnesota's last remaining one-room schoolhouse in Angle Inlet -- with 120 colour photos that illuminate the simple, often abandoned, sometimes refurbished, and nearly vanishing Minnesota pioneer and early schoolhouses. Bridging the past with the present, critically acclaimed writer Jim Heynen complements Ohman's images with twenty-five beautifully crafted tales on the evolution of lunch pails, the consolidation of rural schools, profiles of bullies and teachers' pets, and the timeless wish of schoolchildren of all generations -- school closing on 'snow days'! Heynen, who learned to read and write in a one-room schoolhouse, uses his trademark wit and down-to-earth style to bring back memories of the early days of Minnesota education, taught by hundreds of rural teachers across the state to thousands of farm and town kids alike.

These sixty-four sharply honed stories, selected by the author from more than twenty years of work, showcase Jim Heynens equal mastery of terse, elegant prose and old-style country wit and wisdom. Every tale is an unerring slice from the lives of a group of farm boys, each full of mischief and witness to the worlds tiny miracles. They make coat sails to carry them down a frozen road, teach a three-legged dog to shake hands, build a house from the junk grown-ups throw away, but they also rescue pigs from an unexpected blizzard, feed apples to a blind pony, and learn the songs of different birds. Along the way, they encounter an unforgettable cast of characters: the goose lady, the girl at school with six toes, the man who kept cigars in his cap, Spitting Sally, their crazy Uncle Jack, and dozens more. Heynens stories, as uniquely American as those of Mark Twain or Sherwood Anderson, are ribald fun, but, like all good country tales, they are also filled with surprises and unexpected, deeper implications. For this book Heynen has written twenty new stories and revised many of those tales originally published in his first two collections, both now unavailable.

In more than one hundred perfectly pitched, sometimes perverse, and always surprising stories, Jim Heynen displays his mastery of country wisdom, speech, and behavior as he reveals life in a Midwest where electricity is a magical novelty and cities a distant rumor. These are tales of farmboys finding their way, contending with grown-ups, city kids, birth, death, bats, rats, skunks, and even mean ponies. Or choosing between corncobs and peach tissues, hurling rotten eggs, getting in trouble, helping out, and trying to conceive of the mountains and oceans and forests they've never seen. Their adventures are an education in the natural world, as well as an aknowledgment of what is both common and strange in human nature. Whether true of just funny, sad or even magical, The One-Room Schoolhouse is indelibly American.