LOHRVILLE, Iowa — The older you get, the more amazing your stories of your school days sound, not because you’re embellishing, but because the world has changed so much since you were in school.

There’s no school in Lohrville anymore, but there are still plenty of stories.

“When I was in high school you had to wear dresses. You couldn’t even wear skirts! Gene came into school one day and the principal said, ‘Your hair is too long.’ So, he pulled him into the office, cut his hair off,” Lois Irwin, class of 1977, said.

“Yeah, cut my hair off, I had long hair, dropped it to the ground. Cut my shirt tails off and said, ‘have a good day, sunshine!’” Gene Kinney, class of 1977, explained.

The Lohrville Public Library has every class from 1980 to 1989 — the last year high school students could stay in town. After that, the Lohrville Public School served elementary and middle school only, and not long after that, it closed altogether.

Rather than leave the building there to decay, the town decided to demolish it completely. Some pieces were salvaged, and this small plaza was built to give alumni a historical marker and a place to meet for reunions.

No one denies that it’s a bit of a sad sight, but no one blames the town. It’s simply a testament to the way Iowa’s rural lifestyle has changed.

“It used to be eight families on a section,” Kinney explained. “Now, it’s none. Maybe one on every two sections.”

“It used to be farmers had eight to ten kids because the needed the labor,” Wade Gemberling, class of 1975, said. “Now they’re 70-years-old and none of the kids are left and if they did have kids it’s two.”

“The class sizes were getting so small and there were some courses that they couldn’t off because they didn’t have enough people to take them,” Gary Hildreth, class of 1981, remembered.

“It hurt,” Wade said, “Nobody wanted to see it go. It was just a sign of the times that we didn’t have the enrollment.”

During Lohrville’s heyday 80% of the school kids came from surrounding farms and 20% lived in town. Just before it closed, those percentages had flipped. Almost all of the kids were from the town, and only a few came from the farms, which covered much more area, and now required far fewer people to work them.