Jacks, Lunches, and a Close Call

I have strayed considerable from my review of recess activities (induced by my thinking of the mumble-ti-peg game and its association in my mind with Bible school). But back to recess.

Jacks was a girls’ activity but I remember playing the game with my sisters. During the winter months recess would be held in the gymnasium. This would also be where the children who brought their lunches with them (principally the rural children) would play during the noon hour after having eaten their lunches.

Lunches were eaten in a large room across the hall from the gymnasium. Once in a great while when we were still in the little brown house if the weather was inclement we would take our lunch to school. I remember once when Clarice and I, thinking that the day was going to be cold and snowy, badgered my mother into providing us with lunches to take to school. As it turned out the weather changed and the day became sunny and bright. We carried our lunches that day in some small tin pails, probably the containers for some corn syrup that my mother had bought.

Normally the only fare the children had for lunch was what they brought with them. But there was a period in which some hot dish was prepared and served. This may have been a project carried out by the home ec classes and it may have entailed a small cost to the students. The program may also have been a victim of Depression economics.

At this point I want to write about an event that occurred when Clarice and I were small children. I think both of us were involved directly although it may have been only Clarice. I have no personal recollection of the event, my information is all secondhand, and even then it may be faulty, as when I am not sure that it only concerned Clarice or the two of us.

One morning as we, or only Clarice was walking to school, the day was rainy with thunder and lightning, such as the Midwest can generate on occasion. For some reason Molly Rosene called to Clarice (or to us) to come back to her back porch to wait out the storm for a short time. During this interruption in the walk to school, lightning struck one of the two large cottonwood trees in front of the next house. The strike tore off part of the tree and sent it flying across the sidewalk and against the house where it broke a large glass window.

Had not Molly delayed Clarice (us) she (we) would have been in the vicinity of the tree when it was struck. What would have happened to Clarice (us) could have been quite serious I suppose.