From testaments to Marbles

 

From Testaments to Marbles

As I get older it seems my memories of my early school days become more focused. I also have a high school reunion coming up and it has made me think of school days gone by. Not so much the structured class time, but the unstructured time, when left to our imagination and our own devices, often spent in the school yard planning and finding variations of universal games.  

In class things of course were different.  The day even started in a more structured fashion.  We began with the standard announcements usually from a tone deaf administrator, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and God Save the Queen. We sang with a rote-like emotion as we faced a picture of the Queen that changed with the decades.  

We got our vaccinations, with total compliance.  Received a copy of a red bound Gideon testament, including Psalms and Proverbs, in grade five.  This was before the separation of church and state was properly thought through.  Also in grade five, and more pivotal for me, we received our first ball point pen as we made the worldly transition from pencil to pen and entered the exciting experience of cursive writing. Over time my pen eventually went dry, ironically, I still have that testament.

Out in the school yard, at Prince Phillip Public School, in St Catharines, it was a place of social excitement, and kinetic energy, of pure joy.  Yes, we all had that one friend with the leg braces worn due to polio, but it was part of life and acceptance at the time.  We were outside for the games, the fun, the companionship and competition.

Each game seemed to have a season and a lesson.  My personal favourite was marble season in the spring.  We had many games of gambling, challenge, loss and gain.  There were fortunes in marbles made and lost each day. Our school had a sheltered area for lining up after recess where we set up our marble boards.  A small piece of hand held plywood, with personal art designs to lure in the hesitant customer.  Each board had a row of holes along one edge, each forming an arch of different sizes.  The contestant would flick his /her marble with their index finger from a predetermined distanced marked by a chalk line. 

Should the marble pass through one of the arches that represents a win.  The smaller the arch the higher the level of difficulty and therefore the larger the reward.  For example if one got the tossed marble through the widest arch, the reward was to keep your original marble and score one more from the board owner, the dealer.  

Marble season coincided with card season when a variety of activities transpired from simply trading cards, given the market conditions of the day, to gamesmanship, in a game called flippsies, for obvious reasons.  Player one holds a card against a wall releases it and lets gravity flip it to the ground.  Player two does the same, but tries to land his card touching the first card.  If this is accomplished the player picks up and keeps both cards.  Play continues until this is accomplished.  Sometimes a player might walk away with a dozen cards.

The play-yard had the atmosphere of a medieval market place.  Activity abounded.  Shrill children's’ voices and laughter formed the surround sound of active play. Walking through the yard one had to watch their step being careful not to crowd out a pair on ground level playing Jacks.  In some cases people gathered in circles and talked in fast motion, with animation and passion, telling stories and jokes, or the latest episode of Leave it to Beaver.

Each part of the yard, both the tarmac and the field, was designated for different activities.  Further out from the card and marble sharks were the hopscotch and skipping junkies.  If space allowed there were also the ball bouncers if there was wall space available.  The skippers often did double dutch, with a double rope often with rhymes relating somehow to kissing boys, as the skippers were always girls. 

“…all she wants is a nice young man

Barbara!

I’m telling your mother

For kissing Ronnie

In the parlour

How many kisses did you give him?

The rope then turns faster and faster until the skipper counts until she is out. That number answers the romantic question of the day.

Out into the field and past the soccer posts one finds the tag players, and those throwing baseballs, or footballs, along with the occasional random walkers.  For the bold of spirit there were teams playing Red Rover or British Bull Dog, soon to be banned.  Some recesses were lengthened for bike rodeos to practice and demonstrate skills of daring and skill on the bicycle.  Teachers set up bike routes to follow with obstacles to manoeuvre around in terms of testing balance, speed and stopping skills.

By summer there were more team sports, including soccer, touch football and baseball, all organized by students.  Teachers walked the beat, broke up the occasional disagreement, or fight but generally life was peaceful.  In winter there were snowball fights between teams, but that was strictly limited to territory beyond the soccer posts, in the remote part of the yard.

School in those elementary grades was invigorating.  It was active and creative. There was also a highlight at the end of the week when our beloved custodian, Mr Love,  went up on the school roof and threw down to the crowds all of the balls that had accumulated there for the week.  It was a time of revival and celebration before going home for the weekend.  There were no school buses.  We all walked or biked the distance, retrieving our bikes from the hundreds parked unlocked next to the school’s basketball courts.

Today, retired I Iive by two elementary schools and enjoy the shouts and sounds of playing children.  I think the joy and enthusiasm of the outdoors and fresh air is still there. I hope technology has not suffocated these tendencies. I believe red light/green light, tag, freeze, dodgeball and other imaginative games live on in the lore and legacy of today’s exuberant players.

Marty Rempel