One person who remembers perhaps better than anyone else how the structure was built is John W. Patterson, a carpenter in 1910, who did most of the inside woodwork. Miss Lucy Rector, who taught school during the building's first year, knows what went on at the building that first year. Others are sure to remember as well the warm feeling which the building gave to early San Sabans.

Patterson said that limestone from the old building was used in the new building and that sandstone was placed over it to form a veneered wall.

The sandstone was brought from the old E.E. Hoyt place between town and the Colorado River. The site is now the McConnell Ranch.

The clumsy rocks were loaded and brought by wagon and team to the school. Old time stone cutters were located on the school yard and the men using bench chisels dressed the rocks there.

"We used long leaf yellow pine from Lousiana and South Texas," Paterson continued. "The railroad at that time came only as far as Goldthwaite, so we had to bring the lumber the rest of the way by mule trains."

The carpenters placed big beams in the ceiling, but didn't construct sub-flooring. Twelve rooms, an auditorium and a basement were to be housed in the new school.

Carpenters working with Patterson were Frazier Lowe and Marshal Bailey; painters were Steve Maultsby and Ed Lanan. Foreman for the men was Bob Patton. Walls and roof were completed except the finishing in December and just before the new year, the stairways were finished "in cold blizzard weather," he added.

"We were having school in the little music house", she began, "and all the elementary pupils were in four rooms. There were more than 150 of them, so we really had our hands full."

Miss Rector remembers that some of the elementary students were John Lee Walker, Bill Sanderson, Horace Carter, Mary Ellen Walker and Barney Sullivan. They were real characters."

School was held each day from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the children were summoned each morning by a huge bell in the belfrey. Sudents brought their lunches in paper sacks and drank water from a well on the campus.

"We all drank out of the same dipper and I don't think it was scoured all winter. It's a wonder we all didn't get sick," she related happily.

"Chickens ran wild all over the school yard. Scraps from the sack lunches were strown about the place to feed them. One day Bill Sanderson and some other boys reached out the window and pulled in a Rhode Island Red rooster to the delight of the room.

"It caused quite a turmoil and we teachers had a time getting the room under control again."

Playhouses were located all over the neighboring vacant lots and when recess came the students scattered everywhere.

The new building was "quite the thing," she said. Blackboards went all across the room and that was unusual even for larger schools.

"We were glad to get into the new building, but alsmost froze to death once we got there. The new steam heat didn't quite do the job."

Laughingly she said that one teacher sat on the radiator all day to keep warm. Someone threw paper into the furnace and somehow the whole building was filled with black smoke. Something like this was happening all the time.

In several weeks the old sandstone building will be razed, in several months, its memory will be gone, but memories of school days in it will keep their indelible position in minds which were structured there.