Arts, Crafts, Music, & Events of Breckinridge County Issue 2, July 2015 | Page 52

too loud in the school room because there was always at
least one tattler in each bunch. If you were lucky at recess
you had two pennies for a carton of milk to drink out on the
playground before you ran to go down the slide, swing, hang
by your feet on the monkey bars, or play a game of chase
with the boys chasing the girls. That simple game, at the age
of seven or eight, told who liked who by whom chased who.
If you liked the boy back, you ran slower and let him catch
you, but, at that age, that was the end of that game. Boys
would get out marbles and draw a big ring, and girls would
play jacks or say rhymes and jump rope. Only expert jumpers
could jump to the “Hot Pepper” and not miss. It was the time
of hula hoops, and student out at recess would hold contests
to see who could keep the hoop twirling the longest on their
waist, foot, neck, or arm. Girls had autograph books in which
they collected the signatures and verses written by their
friends. It was a great honor in the lower grades to be asked
by the teacher to take the erasers outside and hit them
together to knock the chalk dust out of them. We all took
turns being a captain and leading lines or holding the doors
open when we went out to lunch, recess, or assembly. Kids of
our time had no computers; we did lessons from books, the
blackboard, or mimeographed sheets that still smelled of the
purple ink that was used to print them. In the first few grades
you looked forward to the daily coloring sheets and watched
to see who colored out of the lines, and who colored the