LITCHFIELD – You got the best gossip by listening in on the party line, spring vacation was set by mud season and just getting to school could be an adventure.

“There was an old car that belonged to the neighbor. Thirteen of us, believe it or not, 13 of us went to school in that old car,” said Fay Smith, 82, who grew up in nearby Manchester.

Smith and three other members of the town’s Senior Center were quizzed by fourth graders from Carrie Ricker School Wednesday on the way life used to be. It’s part of a project for their Maine Studies class that John Jaques is calling “Save Our Stories.” Jaques, the schools’ technology integrator, said he’ll help students work interviews and old photos from the historical society into a short documentary.

Kids went up two at a time and asked questions like, “Did you having running water?” and “How’d you communicate before e-mail and IM?”

Smith remembered having to feed chickens, refill oil lamps and do laundry with a washboard and hand-ringer. She grew up on a busy farm; that’s how her family made a living.

“Cars would come down and buy things because we sold a lot of produce from the gardens,” Smith told the kids. “Back in those days, they had running boards on the cars and the goats would climb on the running board, climb on the hood, right on the roof of the car and the people in there would be shocked.”

“We didn’t have indoor plumbing – there were chores that went along with that, too,” added Patty Merrill.

Every two weeks growing up, Merrill and her sister would make the big trip into town to Gardiner. They’d buy a funny book and potato chips, which were her favorite. They learned to drive on a 1934 Ford pickup that she stills drives around.

Everett McCausland, 77, told kids he learned how to drive on Route 126 with his dad. An out-of-state trooper tailed him home and told McCausland’s father he hadn’t been able to see anyone in the drivers’ seat through the windshield; maybe they ought to wait awhile on those lessons.

Merrill Harvey, Patty’s husband, grew up in a home built in the 1840s by a man who left town for the California gold rush. The man was gone for 10 years. His wife figured him dead, so she remarried. When he came back with gold in his pocket, he kicked the couple out.

“I’ve got a lot of questions I’d like to ask that man,” Harvey said.

McCausland said his boyhood home in West Gardiner got knocked down in 1955 to make way for the Turnpike.

Fourth-grader Angelique James, 9, said she was surprised to hear “they actually had buses and stuff. I thought they just got around by walking.”

Grace Sabine, 9, was struck by all the hard work. The four seniors described barn chores, garden chores, walking a mile to catch a ride to school.

“I would think it would be hard to remember” back that far, she said.