We were “ Crossing Guards “ at school

We were “ Crossing Guards “ at school

My brother and I must have been ambitious kids or we liked authority. Each year volunteers were asked for to be crossing guards at the corners, every morning before school started. The patrol boys, as we were called, stood on corners with a small orange flag on a short wooden pole.

We wore a white, over the shoulder and around the waist, safety belt. We also wore a large, shiny badge, to make us look official. It was a privilege to serve in that way and we were all proud of ourselves. The other kids came walking up to the corner and had to wait for us.

The patrol boy would walk out slowly, into the road, watching for cars coming and the flag was held out in front of us. We would then stop cars while waving our flags and holding our arm out with hand up to signal “ STOP “, like the police do. Then after looking both ways we would then tell the kids to cross, when they were all across the street, we went back to our corner until minutes before school started. We must of had watches, no adults or police were there, just two brothers, about twelve and thirteen years old.

I liked it because we did it before and after school and I recall we got out of class five minutes early to do “ patrol duty “. The rain, the cold and the snow of Milford, did not stop us. That year Gary and I also had a “ perfect attendance award “, not one day late or absent, the whole school year.

It is tough when you cannot stay home sick but someone must bring a “ cold “ to school for the weaker, more sickly to experience. I learned being out in the cold and rain will toughen you up, improve your “constitution “.

I think the fact Mother was in hairdressing school in Worcester, at the Olis Hairdressing Academy during the day, influenced that school feat She also worked at night as a cleaning woman for the Hodgman Rubber Shop in Framingham.

Her four hours there were spent cleaning offices after the staff went home each night. I went there with her once for some reason, but now that I think about it, might have been for her protection from someone there, she was a beautiful woman of thirty five then.

The night I went in the plant it was full of rubber, hard hat diving suits, without the metal top on or the huge weighted boots they wore when diving. They all were hanging from the ceiling on a conveyor system but silent now and eerie. I still see it in my mind fifty years later. There were few scuba divers at that time.

When the school year was ending all of the patrol boys, I do not remember girls doing it back then but our memories fade. The boys were brought up to be tougher back then and girls were told to be feminine. It was not a hateful treatment or way of thinking, just the way it was, everywhere.

If a woman had to be tough like a man, it was to survive, raise a family, she did it but deep inside every woman has the beauty gene. Just a touch of lip stick, some powder lightly patted on, a hairbrush, a look in the mirror to check out everything. This might be, all some had to “ work with “, to shine. The beauty in the mirror does not always show, into the heart.

The reward for all our hard, devoted service to the school system and the other kids was a free day at Fenway Park in Boston and a real Red Sox game. I recall the “ Sox “ beat the “ Twins”.

There were free hotdogs and Gary and I would have grabbed four each if we could, big appetites, big laughs and big eyes “ too big for our stomachs”, Mother would say often. No one threw away food back then, that I knew of. We did have a “ swill bucket “ out back in the ground, where we put some plate scrapings and coffee grinds. All went in there.

Molinari’s Pig Farm had a truck that came at four A.M. to empty the bucket into their big truck out front. Liquid dripped from it onto the street and there are “few words” in the English dictionary to describe the smell of that truck.

If you were ever stuck behind one, “ Rancid “ comes close to describing it. There is no such thing now and all the unsold bread would be fed to them, back then it was common to say, “ feed it to the pigs “, almost any foods.

My buddy raised one to get bacon someday. He got headaches instead. His wife would call him at work, at Raytheon, imagine a top technician like him, would have to punch out and race home to coral the hog before it ruined all the neighbor’s gardens, which it often did.

Years later I told my wise old friend in Maine, John, that hog story and as usual he spewed his simple wisdom to me. “ If a hog is hungry, he will dig out of that pen to find food, but you feed it well and plenty of what it likes, it will be happy and stay there, period. Your buddy was just a cheap, S.O.B. and he paid for it by not feeding the pig enough ”, I changed the word he used (SH@#) into mud. “ Happy as a pig in the mud “.

Imagine in this day and age of crime, speeding cars, soccer Moms, delivery trucks zooming around. Nowadays many women in police like uniforms, each school day, are crossing the children and get respect and have authority. I felt like a big “ shot “, back then.