At Wausau, our playground consisted of a fenced in gravel yard encompassing one half of the block facing 6th Street that our Central Elementary School and Wausau Junior High School occupied. In that playground, all grades from 1 to 6, except for the 4th grade that spent the year another block west towards downtown in a building and playground separated for those with disabilities. The way it was in those days. By sending the 4th grade there, we were supposed to have more empathy for those more unfortunate than us, I guess. I don't recall that happening. We didn't mix. Except on the playground, and then not much. I do recall a big mentally retarded kid hitting a softball in a line drive and hitting Roger in the head. Didn't knock him out, but gave him quite a lump.
As far as I can recall, the classes didn't mix much on Central Elementary playground either. But whenever there was something going on that was special, almost everyone would crowd around to see what it was. Like fights. I don't recall being monitored except when coming back in the building. Out in the playground, it was every boy and girl for him or herself.
Roger and I were always small for our age and class. That kind of gave bigger kids an excuse to bully. Early on I learned that fighting was not something I wanted to do, and whenever a bigger kid grabbed for me on the playground, I would always pull away from them and dash to the other side. They could chase me all they wanted, but as far as I remember, they never caught me until I was saved by the bell to return to class with buttons pulled out on my shirt.
I do remember that Mom routinely sewed buttons back on my shirts and was grateful if I picked up and kept buttons that were pulled out during the day. I also remember that she often had to patch holes on my shirts where buttons had been repeatedly pulled out, leaving the gap to be covered so that she could sew a new button into that place. Since I was usually the target and instigator, Roger didn't suffer so many buttons pulled out.
There was heavy duty, basic playground equipment. In the far left corner near 6th Street was a large merry-go-round, maybe 20 feet in diameter, with a steel center pole and steel rails that came down from the top of the center pole to the outer edges that also served both as a way to grab on and jump on the hardwood floor as the merry-go-round spun around and to push it. I don't recall being on that much except to experiment with putting one's tongue up against the steel center pole or on one of the steel rails when it was below zero, guaranteed to freeze your tongue to it promptly.
But I don't recall anyone getting hurt doing that. It seemed to me that if we let our tongues stay there, rather numb, blood flowing through our tongue would heat the steel and allow us to release our tongues without injury. But I may be wrong on this.
Along the Jefferson Street side of the playground was a row of swings that were very heavy duty with chains supporting hardwood seats. The dream there was to swing high enough to somehow go over the top of the swing about 15 feet above the ground. As hard as we tried, no one ever came close.
There were also a number of heavy duty hardwood teeter totters with steel handholds. The trick there was to get someone on the high end and then jump off, so the teeter totter would drop suddenly on the unsuspecting other guy/guys, because sometimes two people could sit or stand on those large seats on the end.
All of this equipment was very strong and durable and I don't recall any of it ever breaking or having to be repaired. Play on the playground was disorganized and very rough-and-tumble. I was always tearing holes in my pants on the gravel and receiving cuts and scrapes requiring Mercurochrome.
Always game for dares, but I can't remember what they involved except feats of flexibility and agility that I possessed in spades. We never bet any money. We didn't have any. Just bragging rights. There was one thing that older guys would do that I never could. Up close to the school building, there was a barred concrete wall walk down to the basement. Some guys could place their feet on one wall and their backs against the other and walk up or down the 10 foot or so to the bottom by jockeying back and forth. I was just too small to do that, so I didn't try.
Home from school, it was all about role-playing. Cowboys and Indians with nobody wanting to be an Indian. We used real fake cap guns that generally didn't work well and we resorted to hitting a roll of caps with a hammer to see if we could get a larger explosion--we often did. It was always fun to burn things or blow things up. Still true today.
With little resources, I recall making swords out of lath slats and shields out of covers for bushel baskets. We even painted them with what we thought were coat of arms symbols. Our battles with the neighbor kids were generally painless and injury free. Just good fun. I do recall making slingshots, but we shied away from anything that would, "Put your eye out!"
We didn't have a dog in the city. Except for the attack Pomeranians that a lady had when we crossed 6th Street on the corner every day, I don't recall any dogs in our neighborhood. I guess Dad didn't want to have to tie one up all day. Other kids had guinea pigs, rats, canaries, parakeets and other small pets in the house, but we had turtles, small turtles. I got quite good at "wounding" flies to feed to our turtle. The turtle liked the flies much better than turtle food.
One spring, a classmate told us about snakes up on the hills a few blocks from home. We went exploring those hills that were all grass with no trees, but steep with lots of small, glacier ground smooth rocks. All we had to do was tip over a rock and we would find either a red or a green grass snake underneath. I think I got three or four and carried them around in my pocket. They were harmless, but scared the girls. They were soon gone.
Roger and I didn't have any spending money for fads. One thing that was constant during grade school was buying bubblegum for baseball cards. Once in a while I chewed bubblegum for that powdered sugar on it until my jaw got tired, and then, swallowed it. Don't recall getting any baseball cards that were worth anything or even trading cards like some kids really got into. Mickey Mantle. Ted Williams. Stan Musial. Even Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Babe Ruth. But those were rare in my day. We got mostly players we didn't recognize, not being fans.
For a while, people were playing jacks. Some were quite good with it, but I never really was. It was just one of those things that would come and go. Like the girls chalking the sidewalks and jumping the patterns. Also skipping rope. We knew that boxers skipped rope, but we didn't make a habit of it. Like dolls, skipping rope was for girls.
We collected and played marbles. But there were citywide tournaments that I never participated in because I wasn't good enough. There were some kids who were very good and had huge stashes of marbles that they had won. In my small collection, I never played those really good ones. But some kids with money bought them and would lose them to those of us who didn't. We had our own trickle-down economy in those days acquiring secondhand what the rich kids had.
Somewhere along the 5th grade or so everyone was getting into yo-yos. A short Japanese guy would arrive on our playground and start showing us some beautiful yo-yos that he had, but not only that, highflying and intricate string maneuvers with those yo-yos that we really envied and wished that we could do.
Roger and I saved our money and bought some midrange yo-yos with jewels embe dded in the side, commencing to learn how to do tricks on them. I got quite good with my yo-yo, but never even approached what that Japanese guy could do. I often wonder how much the yo-yo company paid him to go on the playgrounds and promote their product. I don't think that's allowed anymore today, but it sure worked back then. Before long, any kid who could afford one had a yo-yo.
Of course, for some older kids, particularly those in the junior high school who didn't get out on the playground, smoking became the, "In thing," to do… Cool. After our earlier run in with the police, I never engaged in that habit again.
Other fads included everybody playing Clue or Cootie. I never liked either of them. Mom always had games for us, particularly Sorry, Monopoly and Crossword, a cheaper version of Scrabble. I never engaged in kids card games. We learned grown-up games like canasta, spades, pinochle, and many others, even poker, at an early age and played with adults as soon as they would let us.
We got an electric train for Christmas. Tried every way to destroy it, even engaged in train wrecks and putting a needle across the track to short it out and get red hot. Eventually, Mom packaged the whole thing up and sold it. She was good at that. I also recall a small Erector Set. Didn't make anything colossal with it because we didn't have the parts and couldn't afford additional ones.
And we got a chemistry set. We were able to do all the silly little experiments in the book, but were unable to make gunpowder or nitroglycerin. We tried and we failed. Perhaps the makers of the kit knew we would try and made sure that those chemicals, like potassium nitrate (saltpeter), were not of the sufficient quality to do the job.
There were two 6th grades because kids from another school came to Central Elementary. I guess, because there wasn't room in their school. Roger and I were placed with the new kids. That was all right with me, because there was a tomboy blonde that I really fell for named Yvonne. She became my first "real" girlfriend. I recall one day when she got in a fight with another girl and we all watched. I was proud of her. I was invited to her birthday party that was all-girls except me and Roger. She sat on my lap and gave me my first boner. I recall that she and her girlfriends were big fans of that he-man, Rock Hudson. Anyway, before the school year was over, she faded from view. At one point another guy came over and showed me her name carved on his arm with a knife, "Evonne." I wasn't impressed. The guy couldn't even spell right.
Parents were involved in a big production every year called, Stunt Night, held at a local theater. We would go to Saturday afternoon matinees there and see all kinds of cowboy movies and our favorite: all cartoons. There was funny stuff like Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges. A great way to spend Saturdays for about 10¢ a ticket on strips that our mother would buy.
Stunt Night was a citywide competition between grade schools every year. Our parents participated for three or four of those years. The one that I really remember was when Mom dressed up like a movie star and played the trapeze artist that Betty Hutton played in The Greatest Show on Earth. I think they won that year and there was a big party afterward that kids couldn't go to. It's a good thing Mom didn't have to perform, she wasn't that good with athletic things. Dad was. He could hang by his toes and do pull-ups or push-ups all day.
Anyway, Mom got the idea to invite some guys and girls from our class over for kissing games. I guess she didn't want us entering puberty without any practice. The only game that I remember was spin the bottle. As a result, I got to kiss some of the best girls in our class like Candy. I'm not sure that prepared me for later life, but it was enjoyable. Unfortunately, those relationships with girls stopped when we moved the next year to that hick town, Marshfield, that seemed quite backward after Wausau.
Copyright 2019 © Ronald W. Hull
7/29/19
