Time Travel

 I took a turn on a rural road and I thought I had driven right into the past.  Before me was an old schoolhouse and beside it was the playground that I remembered from my elementary school days.  I dearly loved this playground equipment, have thought of it fondly over the years, and never expected to see it again.  Why not?  Because I'm sure parents today would be appalled at the lack of safety it afforded.  But oh, the fun!

In the background is the merry-go-round.  You had to rush out the door at recess to get a place on it because everyone wanted to ride.  The "big kids" stood and hung on to a pole while the "little kids" hung on for dear life seated on the boards with feet dangling.  The big kids on the poles rocked the whole thing side to side with their feet and more big kids took turns pushing. Soon the world would be going by so fast you just could not believe the thrill. 

   In the foreground is the trapeze bar from which you could hang by your knees and do daring tricks like flipping off to land on your feet, then go to the back of the line for another turn.  I was very good at this.

This is the view from the merry-go-round if you hung onto the handrail and leaned back as far as you could from the board seat.  Yes, it made you dizzy and queasy, but still oh so fun.

  This is the view from the top of what we called the teeter totter.  You did your best to get a friend of equal weight on the other end because if the opposite person were too heavy, you could never get him up in the air.  If he were too light, you would get quite a bone- and teeth-jarring thump when you hit bottom.

   Local 4-H club members and their horses were practicing barrel racing in a field and someone had opened the schoolhouse doors.  No one was close by to ask, so I went in. 

 

 Just like my school, inside the door and up a few steps was the cloakroom with hooks to hold the wool coats and snow pants we wore in the winter and a place underneath to store the rubber snow boots that went on over our shoes and zipped up the front.

One last surprise awaited me when I stuck my head in the classroom -- the exact light fixtures that graced the ceiling of my school.  My school was a rural school with eight grades.  I don't know how many classrooms there were but most had more than one grade in each.  When I was in fifth grade, a new school was built, and I moved up the hill with my class into this new building.  I cannot tell you one thing about the new school and its playground, but I remember every little detail of the old Powers School!  Wonder why that is?

 

Thanks for visiting my blog.  I'd love to read a comment about your school days.