‘Hoedown Week’ Comes to School

Dressed as buckaroos and bandits, cowgirls and cowpokes, they came to learn the ways of the Old West. The location? A private school in Tarzana that became a kind of living history lesson for a few hours on Friday.

“This is country hoedown week,” explained Michele Carlin, director of Valley Trails Camp, a 10-week summer program at Woodcrest School. Around her, boys and girls swarmed across the blacktop learning such long-ago tasks as gold panning and flour milling.

“We want the children to have a lot of hands-on experience,” Carlin said.

The materials were supplied by a Portland, Ore., company called Pioneer Living Experience, which uses authentic equipment to demonstrate the ways people lived, worked, ate and relaxed more than 100 years ago.

“Men wore lots of vests,” read one display featuring period clothing. “This is a leather vest made from a cow.”

Karen Oglesby, who trucked the exhibits from Fontana early Friday morning, said the brief sessions give children a window into the past that books and movies cannot.

“They’re able to touch and feel,” she said as she helped several girls make necklaces from colored bits of macaroni. “They’re able to comprehend things more easily.”

Using a butter knife for a blade, Aria Vazirnia practiced shaving cowboy-style in front of a small mirror. “I like it,” he said afterward. “It makes my face smooth.”

For 8-year-old boys like Aria, the appeal of the cowboy is simple. “I like riding horses. I like chasing people with guns,” he said.

David Murphy, 5, came dressed as a sheriff but said that while he likes cowboys, he doesn’t want to be one when he grows up.

“I’m going to be a veterinarian-zookeeper-fireman,” he said.