One look at this picture and it’s 1959 and I’m instantly transported back to the playground of the Avoca School on Chicago’s North Shore.
The dresses on the girls and that awful-looking ring thing bring back vivid memories of recess.
Good times.
But the more I think about it, it’s a miracle that any of us survived the lethal environment of our grammar school playground. It was simply loaded with pitfalls and danger where ever you looked.
A modern tot could never survive the jungle (gym) of us brave Baby Boomers.
Wusses!
Let’s start with this.
This medieval-looking catapult type gizmo might go by the cute name of “teeter totter” but it was a daily menace to skinny kids like me.
My friends had hours of amusement bouncing down hard on one end actively trying disengage me – well “launch me” would be the more accurate term here- into the stratosphere.
Sometimes they would even beg for assistance from one or two of the bigger boys and they would all pile on one end while I desperately clung for my life on the other.
Fun, right?
Then there was this piece of playground equipment.
From Hell.
To those of you lucky enough not to be familiar with this instrument of torture, that’s called a Tether Ball. The main object was to swing it around the pole with a mighty toss- hopefully taking your opponent’s head off before it snaked its way around.
Then there was this little honey.
The slide.
Now ordinarily, a fairly harmless contraption. If used properly.
But only wimps and scaredy cats used it properly.
In order to be in the In Crowd, you had to go down it head first, or backwards, or standing up- if the teachers didn’t catch you.
And then there were these.
The swings!
Harmless, innocent fun at recess, right?
Except ours were not as innocent as they looked.
See the line of swings in the photo?
As we got older, the object of swinging changed. Instead of going higher- “reaching for the moon”- we now pumped our legs wildly and went crazily sideways and tried to ram the person swinging next to us.
What could be more fun that that?
Let’s discuss these now.
That’s right. The Monkey Bars. I remember blithely hanging upside down, holding my knees close together so no one would start chanting, “I see London, I see France…” and casually swinging from these lethal irons bars many a recess.
This unforgiving iron monster was an accident just waiting to happen.
In fact, take a look at the shiner Natasha gave herself in first grade when she had an unfortunate encounter with a wayward Monkey Bar.
DCFS Sidebar: Upon being called by the school nurse, I ran to school and rushed her to the eye doctor. Our regular guy was out of town and his sub took one look at her and said to me, “How did this happen?”
“She hit her face on the Monkey Bars,” I reported.
As he took Natasha into his examining room, I heard him again ask her sotto voce, “So how did this happen?”
And maybe now is the time to discuss the actual playground itself.
Was it made out of tanbark or cushiony sod or forgiving Astroturf or something?
Heck, no.
It was merciless asphalt.
Sure, it was great for jacks and jump rope and hop scotch.
But if you fell from the swings, the jungle gym, the slide, hit the ground in any way…
OUCH.
The equipment wasn’t the only thing that could hurt you on the playground of my childhood.
There were the games.
Red Rover and Dodge Ball being the two biggest offenders.
Red Rover was sadistic.
The girls would line up along one end of the playground. The boys would do the same.
Then the chanting started.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, let Bob come over,” intoned the girls. And then they would link and clench hands, hoping to repel the invader and keep him from breaking through the line of chained hands.
Bob- one of the biggest kids in the class- would carefully look the line up and down and appraise his chances.
And then he would spot yours truly and his eyes would gleam.
And barreling across the playground at the speed of a locomotive, he would charge directly at me and my spindly wrists.
I never remember letting go.
I just remember laying on the asphalt, staring up at the sky, with the wind knocked out of me by his momentum.
Well, recess is over. Time to go back to the blackboard.
PA Announcement: The next Letter From Elba will be posted on Sunday, January 29. Ellen hopes you’ll be patient with her and not take off any points for tardiness.
‘Til then, hope you enjoy this one, Class.
(Now that I’m absent from the playground, I love this game.)
You bring back memoties of the playground at O’Keeffe school inthe 1950’s… We also had a big sand box with a roof over it and a playground director named Queenie. Lots of fun and skinned knees!
Glad we took a Bactine-tinged walk down Menory Lane. Thanks, Vivian.
Good ole’ O’Keeffe……..
No “safe spaces” on school grounds in those days. Huhhh, Viv?
The girls had Queenie. And us boys had Jim Economacos.
Remember?
What a fun posting this was, Ellen. It brought back lots of memories of our playground at Harper School. Someone was always falling down through the middle of what we called the jungle gym (monkey bars) and breaking a leg or arm. No wonder they eventually disappeared from school playgrounds.
I remember telling a sixth grade girl, Caroline Hamilton, I was tired of her cheating at dodge ball when I was in fifth grade. She socked me in the face. She was kind of a a tough husky girl.
I insisted on wearing pants to school until I was in about third or fourth grade. I was in the middle of five brothers, including a twin brother, so it’s usually what I wore at home when I played boy stuff with them. So, I didn’t have to be quite as careful about anyone saying, “I see London, I see…..”
Do you remember any of your jump rope rhymes? I remember a couple of ours. We also learned to double jump, which was fun.
And what fun YOUR memories of recess and the playground are. “Double jump.” Haven’t thought about that term in fifty years. “I like coffee, I like tea…something something about the boy who’s going to marry me.” Thanks, Susan.
I had forgotten the jump rope rhyme, “I like coffee, I like tea….” I remember one which started out with, “Teddy bear, Teddy bear turn around. Teddy bear, Teddy bear, touch the ground.” There was another one that talked about “First comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage,” or something like that. All of our jump rope rhymes can probably be found on the Internet on sites about the subject. I really liked jumping rope. I used jump roping one time as an exercise to lose weight after the birth of my third child. I was surprised how much energy it took. Thanks again for your posting about our childhood recess, the best part of school for me.
Wow! These are great! And I haven’t thought about “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear turn around for a zillion years.” It all came rushing back. I’m still nervous thinking about Double Dutch! Thanks, Susan. Your comments were the best part of this post for me.