Introducing McQueeney Elementary School

 

[McQueeney As It Is Now and Wasn't Then]

Today, if you went looking for the McQueeney Elementary School that I went to, you wouldn’t find it. There’s a building there, of course, and under it you might still find the old bones of the institution as it was when I attended, but my McQueeney is gone. It was as much a time as a place.

“Though McQueeney Elementary School is part of Seguin ISD, it is not located in Seguin but in the lakeside resort area of McQueeney. The name of the area, according to E. John Gesick, Jr. author of Under the Live Oak Tree, was indirectly named by Mr. C.F. Blumberg. Mr. Blumberg built a store around 1900, which was less than a mile from a railroad stop. As the story goes, Mr. Blumberg decided to call the location of his store, McQueeney, after the Superintendent of the Lines. His hope was that Mr. McQueeney, would designate his store location as the new train stop, thereby promoting business for his store. The McQueeney store became the McQueeney community, and the school was indirectly named after the Superintendent of the Lines, Mr. McQueeney.” – from the McQueeney Elementary School “About Us”.

Since we were located closer to this lakeside resort community than we were to town, this was our school. And what an odd little pocket of a place it was.

Although I began First Grade in the very tail-end of the Sixties, the spirit of the school was firmly in the Fifties, if not the Forties, as you might well expect in a rural Texas area. The building itself was a rather plain brick construction, like a squared capital G without its arm. There were classrooms from First to Sixth Grade when I began, although by the time I was in the Fifth, the Sixth was going to be phased out, as a new middle school had been built. But we’ll get to that in time.