240110 The Garfield School

The Garfield school.

This is a post near and dear to me. Every free moment of my life from 6 to 16 was spent in the Garfield school playground. The school was perhaps 40 steps away from my home. I didn’t go to school there; I was sent to another school. My siblings all attended there.

The school had a huge playground that wrapped around the school and stretched far and wide. There were what were called jungle gyms or monkey bars. They were basically pipes put together to form something like a small house with no no walls or floors.

This was a 1960 model, different from the ones we had in the forties and fifties. It is safe to say these were not safe, but that’s the way life was back then. Many fell on them, lost a tooth or two or sprained a wrist or an arm. We flocked to them and spent hours racing around on them. That was high fun back then. There was also a softball diamond in the yard. It was very popular in the summertime. Any time there were enough people to form teams, the game was on! There was an outdoor concrete basketball court that was popular during basketball season. We had a large area for soccer games and touch football or flag football as it is called today. There were lively games called “Kick the can” Whomever was “it” guarded the can, but to get rid of that he had to find someone else hiding and then race back to kick the can before the one in hiding did, if that happened the same guy had to stay guarding the can. One had to be careful not to pass by someone in hiding that person could race to and kick the can forcing the “it” guy to stay on guarding the can. The front steps of the school were old worn marble. There were four steps. In summer we played what was called “step ball” . The game used a tennis ball. It was a four person game, two batters on one team and two fielders on the other team. The batters smashed the tennis ball to the edge of the step and the ball went sailing outward. If either fielder missed the ball the batters continued, but if the ball left on the fly and was caught in the air, that was an out like in baseball. The ball could be launched by the batter as a ground ball and if it got past the first fielder it was considered a hit as in baseball. It was a fun game and only required 4 players. The steps were also a gathering place for chit chat or talking about girls. I learned a lot of bad information there. Come winter time and snow was several inches deep it was snowball fighting time. The back side of the school was elevated high above the street below, making it a wonderful place to launch snowballs on the cars moving along the avenue. Sometimes the owners would stop and yell at us. On occasion they would try to catch one of us, but by the time they got up the hill we were long gone. I should be ashamed of that activity, but I’m not.

I would leave the house and spend all day over at Garfield. Mom never had to worry back then. I was there playing until mom let out a yell to come home and I had better answer the call. The call was to get me home for supper.