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| Milk River Elementary. My home away from home. |
The Milk River Elementary School, house
of learning to some two hundred children, was on the north-east
corner of the town.
On the north and east, it was bordered
by farmland.
On the south, by houses.
And on the west, by the field that
stretched between it and the high school two blocks away.
The only playground equipment was a set
of teeter-totters (see-saws) at the east end of the school building,
and a monkey-bar on the west.
Oh and sometime between grades three
and four, near the garbage, they installed a tether-ball pole.
The very latest in school-ground play
equipment.
Let’s face it, dependance on toys
and/or playing apparatus for entertainment wasn't expected.
Or necessary, as it turned out.
Because we made up our own games.
And two hundred-plus kids pooling their
collective imaginations can come up with a lot of 'entertainment'.
We held impromptu races.
Which Kathy 'The Jet' Angyal always
won.
Flag football games.
I should probably mention, here, that I
never saw the use in just grabbing the flag when you can grab the
whole kid.
And Lloyd Eagleson has the scars to
prove it.
Climbing 'the rock'.
But that was only for the older, cooler
kids.
Hide and seek.
Fun, but limiting when you had nothing
but an open field in which to hide. (Or the neighbour's barley crop,
which stood some feet over our heads. Just FYI.)
Tag. In its many incarnations.
Regular.
Frozen.
Poison.
Kick the can.
And King of the Castle.
Games of hopscotch.
There was one time we tried to get
really creative and have some fun 'off site'.
And had an early brush with the law.
But that is another post . . .
Several of the girls played jump rope
games.
Very popular and truly amazing to
watch.
I, who had a hard time walking and
breathing at the same time, was astounded at what many of those girls
could do.
And while chanting/singing, too.
I never saw the use for it, though I
did try.
But after getting my feet knocked out
from beneath me for the 40th time, I gave it up as
hopeless.
And put the jump ropes to better use.
I should remind you that we were mostly
farm kids.
And I and many others, like me, were
completely infatuated with horses.
Thus, skipping ropes immediately
brought to mind – harnesses.
Because.
We would pass the rope around the
middle (waist) of our chosen horse, hang onto the ends, give the
accepted 'start' command in a firm voice.
Giddyap! or something similarly
creative.
And we were off.
Horse pulling.
'Driver' . . . umm . . . driving.
Around, over and through the other kids
on the playground.
It was fun.
When we tired of running, we would nip
into the aforementioned barley crop across the road and pull up
armloads of green, sweet-smelling 'hay'.
As feed.
And to build little nests for our
steeds.
You know, now that I think of it, I
wonder what the farmer thought when he saw the ragged south-east
corner of his crop.
As Milk River still went on to produce
three 'Barley Kings', I guess our armloads of stolen barley stalks
didn't make too much of a difference.
Back to my story . . .
I was there recently.
At Milk River Elementary, I mean.
The school now has extensive and
obviously expensive playground equipment.
And trees.
And tall fences.
The monkey bars are gone.
As are the teeter-totters and tether
ball.
There are still farmer's fields to the
east.
But a large ball-diamond had been
constructed on the west side, between it and the high school.
And houses and development on the
north, completely eliminating our old barley field.
I stared at the 'developed' space and
pictured us kids playing and laughing at recess and noon hour.
Do these modern children, with their
modern conveniences, have as much fun as we did?
Somehow, I doubt it.
