Growing up in a small farming community gives a person a different sense of what “small” really means.
For me, it was eight kids in a classroom.
That was the size of my first-grade class at Edwall Grade School in eastern Washington. There were four classrooms in the building, a gym in the middle, a small library and office, and a handful of teachers. There was no long list of specialized programs or a school full of hundreds of students moving through the hallways. Life was much simpler than that. Most of the families around us were involved in agriculture, and everyone seemed to know everyone else.
At the time, none of this seemed unusual.
It was simply where I went to school.
Looking back through the years, though, I realize how much of my early life was shaped by that setting. The people, the farm, the school, the friendships and even the limits of a small community became part of the foundation I carried with me long after I left Edwall.
There Were Only Eight of Us
My first and second-grade teacher was Mrs. Looney. There were eight children in my class, and I knew where every one of them came from because nearly all of our families were connected to farming or some other part of rural life.
Ted Fritsch lived about three miles away and became my best friend. We were on the same bus route, which made it easier for us to spend time together. Pat Hogan lived in the opposite direction. We were all connected by the same small network of roads, farms and families.
There was something unusual about knowing the backgrounds of nearly everyone around you.
You knew who the farmers were. You knew whose father worked at the grain elevator. You knew who lived down the road. You knew who rode the same school bus.
There was very little anonymity.
That was simply life in Edwall.
The school itself reflected the community. It had been built in 1939 on land that had once belonged to Peter Edwall. Grades one through eight were taught there, with one teacher responsible for two grades. There were four classrooms, a gymnasium, restrooms, a small library and a teacher’s room.
That was about it.
And for a young boy growing up on a farm, it was enough.
When a Small Town Was the Whole World
Today, it is easy to look back at a place like Edwall and describe it as isolated. That would not quite capture what it felt like to live there.
It was not that I spent my childhood thinking about how small the community was. I did not compare it with larger towns or wonder what I was missing. Edwall was simply the world I knew.
The farm was part of that world. So was school.
So were the families around us.
Agriculture was not something discussed as an industry or a career choice. It was simply what people did. The families in my class were tied to farming, grain, transportation and other parts of rural life. There were no doctors, dentists or lawyers in the immediate community.
That did not make the place feel incomplete.
It made the connections between people stronger.
When your community is small, people tend to know more about one another. Your friend’s parents are not strangers. Your teacher knows your family. Your family knows the families of your classmates.
That kind of familiarity stays with a person.
The World Outside Edwall Was Already Waiting
There was another side to growing up in a place like this.
Even though Edwall was small, the world beyond it was never completely out of sight.
My father was deeply involved in agriculture and community affairs. He had served as chairman of the Edwall School Board, and the decision to close the local high school eventually became part of the community’s story. Enrollment had fallen to only a handful of students in each class, so the high school was consolidated with the one in Reardan, about 20 miles away.
That change said something about rural communities at the time.
Places that had once supported their own schools were changing. Families were moving. Numbers were declining. Communities had to make decisions that were practical, even when those decisions meant giving up something familiar.
I was still young when all of this was happening.
I could not have understood the larger significance of it then.
But those changes were part of the landscape of my childhood.
The Friendships Were Simple
One of the things I remember most about those early years is how ordinary the friendships were.
Ted lived close enough that getting together did not require much planning. We were both on the same bus route, and that was enough to keep us connected.
There was also the rough-and-tumble side of growing up with boys. Pat and Ted were both the youngest of three brothers, which meant they took their share of teasing and getting beaten up by their older siblings. When I visited, I sometimes got my share of it too.
There is no grand lesson attached to that memory.
It is simply part of being a kid.
That is one reason childhood memories can be so powerful. They do not always involve major events. Sometimes it is the small details that stay with you because they capture what everyday life actually felt like.
A school bus.
A friend who lived three miles away.
Eight children in a classroom.
A small school building.
A farm community where everyone knew your family.
Those details can say more about childhood than a list of accomplishments ever could.
What I Carried Beyond Edwall
My life eventually took me far beyond that little school.
Football became a major part of my life. Washington State became my college home. Later came careers in college athletics, leadership positions, different universities, major decisions and experiences that I could never have imagined while sitting in that first-grade classroom.
But the boy who left Edwall did not disappear.
The rural background stayed with me.
The way people worked. The importance of family. The familiarity of community. The understanding that there was always a job that needed doing.
Those things were part of me before I ever had a title, before I became an athletic director and long before anyone would be interested in reading about my career.
That is one reason I wanted the early years included in my story.
A memoir should not begin with the résumé.
It should begin with the person.
Why This Story Belongs in Crab Creek Chronicles
Crab Creek Chronicles is not only a book about college football or athletic administration. It begins much earlier, with childhood, family, farming and the community that shaped those early years.
The title itself comes from Crab Creek, the spring-fed waterway that ran through the pasture where our cattle grazed when I was growing up. In describing the creek years later, I wrote about its sights, smells and sounds, and about how it remained unchanged even as everything else in my life moved forward.
That is part of what I wanted the memoir to preserve.
Not just the big games.
Not just the jobs.
Not just the decisions that made headlines.
The little school in Edwall belongs there too.
So do the eight children who sat in that classroom.
When I think about how far life eventually took me, it is easy to focus on the distance between those two worlds. But there really was no separation. The boy sitting in that small classroom and the man who eventually led major college athletic programs were the same person at different points in the journey.
And sometimes, to understand the man, you have to go back to the eight kids in the classroom.
FAQs
Where did Bill Moos grow up?
Bill Moos grew up in the rural community of Edwall, Washington, where his family was involved in farming. His childhood and early family life are important parts of Crab Creek Chronicles.
What was Bill Moos’s childhood school like?
His first-grade class at Edwall Grade School had eight children. The school served grades one through eight and reflected the small agricultural community around it.
Is Bill Moos’s childhood included in his memoir?
Yes. Crab Creek Chronicles: From the Wheat Fields to the Ball Fields and Beyond covers his childhood in eastern Washington alongside his later football and athletic-director career.
What is Crab Creek Chronicles about?
The memoir follows Bill Moos from his childhood and football years through his career as an athletic director at Montana, Oregon, Washington State and Nebraska.
Why is Edwall important to Bill Moos’s story?
Edwall represents the rural setting, family life, school experiences and agricultural community that shaped the early part of his life. Those experiences provide important context for the person he became.