The song went “Oh Emerson, our leader and our guide ?” sung to the tune of Finlandia. “We rally to your colors, white and blue. Oh Emerson, we’ll always be true.” A girl from the 1960 graduating class wrote the words, Mr. Leslie, the vocal music teacher, said.
Emerson School is long gone, replaced by the really big Gwendolyn Brooks School. I was meandering through Oak Park during my 30-year high school reunion weekend, and thought I’d take a peek at the place where I spent the entire decade (almost) of the ’60s. GONE! BIG WHITE SCHOOL THERE NOW! First question was where’s the playground?
OK, maybe there’s a playground hiding somewhere. I didn’t see it. I hope there’s a playground, because school would have been no fun without it. Actually, Emerson had several playgrounds. The first one we’d inhabit was the tiny area outside the Kenilworth “kindergarten” entrance. First and second-graders played in another area off to the right. Third and fourth kids were back on the other side of the school ( I think ?#34; may be wrong). Finally, once you were in fifth grade, you were officially a big kid and allowed to hang out in the huge playground on the Washington side of the school.
One year, they put up a big, red, triangle-shaped slide in the playground on the Clinton side. We had a blast climbing up that huge expanse of sheet metal, gripping the railing tightly while trying to unpeel our friends’ fingers from it. I sincerely doubt those slides are legal anymore.
The first day of sixth grade was a huge deal. I imagined that I had somehow become sophisticated and worldly over the summer, so I wore the orange skirt with the low-slung belt to school that first day with the “poor boy” rib-knit top tucked in. Very Mrs. Peel. I also imagined that incredibly handsome Steve Barrow noticed me. Of course, “imagined” is the key word here, but I felt very cool slinking across the big playground from the Washington/Kenilworth corner to the doors in the middle of the building.
From fifth through eighth grade, we played four-square in the big playground. It wasn’t a very clever game; just some business about bouncing a ball between four people in the four squares painted on the ground, but it was competitive and fun. It was a great way to get a little exercise before the bell rang in the morning ?#34; that and the impromptu softball games.
The playground wasn’t just fun and games, though. We all experienced moments of heartbreak on the asphalt. Teasing and mocking were everywhere. Jim Brandstrader kicked me hard in the shins almost every day there during sixth grade. (So much for sophisticated and worldly.) Softball games brought out the meanie in team captains when they said things like, “YOU take Wunder. I don’t want her!” And I remember Debbie Lugai crying during recess when Kennedy was shot.
But that’s life. Guess the whole playground concept was realistic preparation for what came later. Please tell me there’s a playground somewhere at that school.