He was provided corn cobs for fuel and had to do the janitorial work himself. His first teaching job, at a country school, began in December 1898, at a rate of $30 a month for four months. He continued his education and got his Bachelor’s degree by completing the scientific program in 1897 at age 16. Neihardt graduated with his teaching degree at the age of 15, but was too young to teach. The first bell was at 6:30 a.m., and then twice every 50 minutes until 6:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. Pile recognized John’s precociousness and hired him as the campus bell ringer so that he could pay his tuition. One of her clients was the family of James Pile, first president of Nebraska Normal College (now Wayne State College). While living in Wayne, John’s mother Alice worked as a seamstress. But Neihardt himself pointed to a fever dream he had at age 12, in which he saw himself floating through space and felt the presence of a "spirit brother," as the event that determined his life work as a poet and inspired the content of that work. This exposure to the richness and variety of life on the plains shaped the direction of his life work. He had also lived in a sod house in northwestern Kansas and in the Missouri River town of Kansas City. Born on January 8, 1881, in Sharpsburg, Illinois, to Nicholas and Alice Neihardt, 11-year-old John Neihardt moved to Wayne, Nebraska, in 1891, with his mother and two sisters.
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