Tonight, I sat with other story tellers to do a presentation on the "Winds of War" about the war of 1812, and how it affected our little corner of the world. This was presented at the Wilder Museum. You can click on the words 'Wilder Museum' to see a link. For whatever reason, I can't write a blog post from anything but HTML, which doesn't let me highlight the color.
But, I digress.
After I did my piece, I sat down and was able to relax a bit, look around. I went to elementary school in that little building before it was turned into a museum. So did my father. I was actually sitting where I once played Four Square with a big red rubber ball. If I looked over to the right I could see where the maypole used to be, and the gazebo where we all sat and played "Button, Button".
It was a strange feeling to be an old woman in the place where I was a young child. We were talking about history, about days gone by. Just as surely as the 1800s are gone, well, so are the 1960s, where children played on playground equipment that would not be permitted today. That playground is gone, for safety purposes no doubt, but it felt like if I listened hard enough, I would still be able to hear the rhythmic scree---screeeeeeeeeeee of the big old swings. For a minute, I had a vision of small feet in brown buckle shoes silhouetted against the sky as I leaned back, pumping that swing higher and higher, my pink dress fluttering in the wind.
We all knew it, even back then: recess would not last forever.