Marbles, Monkey Bars, and The Lunchbox Kid

 

Marbles, Monkey Bars, and the Lunchbox Kid

This may not be the best title for this chapter, but it's the one that stuck. I’ve considered others, but none quite seemed to fit. Kids today are just different—nothing like I was when I was young. They don’t play the same games or even have the same kinds of toys. I haven’t visited many elementary school playgrounds lately, but I’ve spent enough time around toddlers and adolescents to know: kids today don’t play like we used to.

Nowadays, you see little kids clutching tablets like precious relics, eyes glued to the screen as if they were enchanted. And if you want to punish one of today’s toddlers, just threaten to take their device away—they’ll scream louder than if you’d spanked them. But I digress. This isn’t an essay on modern parenting. It’s about playing. And by playing, I mean getting outside, soaking up the sun, breathing fresh air, and doing the kind of things a child should do—at least, in my opinion.

I was a typical kid of the 1960s when I started elementary school. I was shy and naïve and didn’t make friends easily. One of the first kids I connected with was Bart Mitchell. He lived just past the big pasture that we played in when we weren’t in school. Bart and I stayed best friends throughout our lives. We went to school together, worked together, even shared an apartment for a while. Eventually, he became my brother-in-law. But back to the story.

I started first grade in a little white wooden building that housed the first and second grades. My teacher was Mrs. Florence Hurst. That’s where I began learning my ABCs and stumbled my way through Dick and Jane books. I remember being genuinely worried that I might forget everything I’d learned as soon as I got home. Kids think the oddest things sometimes.

We spent a lot of time on the playground, or so it seemed to me. There was a baseball field, big metal slides, swing sets, and monkey bars. And I don’t mean the low, padded ones you see today—I mean the real deal. You could climb up ten or twelve feet, and if you fell, you got hurt. Simple as that. The cherry on top of that playground was the nearby creek—the Little Cahaba River ran just outside the playground’s edge. My friend Jenny and I used to sneak off and explore it when nobody was looking. Then we’d slip back in, no one the wiser.

First and second grades were mostly uneventful. I managed to learn my ABCs, how to add and subtract, and I even discovered a love for reading. One of the first books my mom got me was titled You Will Go to the Moon!. It was a children’s book about space travel, rockets, and the future of moon exploration. I loved the idea of visiting the moon. Sadly, I never made it.

In third grade, I moved to the two-story red brick school building and landed in Miss Kirkendall’s class. That building has long since been torn down. Today, there’s a stone monument, a flagpole, and an electronic bulletin board where it once stood. It was during those years that school started to become more fun—especially before class and at recess.

That’s when the marble games began.

Each day, a group of boys would gather to play marbles—for keeps. First, we’d draw a circle in the dirt and each player would toss in a marble. That was the pot. Then, from a larger outer circle—the “lag line”—we’d take turns shooting our best marble, aiming to knock the others out of the circle. If you hit one out, you got to keep it. Simple and high-stakes.

I was good at marbles. I quickly built up a serious collection—Steelies, Oilies, Pearlies, Chinkies, Cat’s Eyes—you name it. I loved them all.

One kid I remember vividly from those days was named Jonathan. He was younger than the rest of us and had a nasty habit of running through our marble games, kicking marbles out of the circle with his feet. He was quick, too—usually managed to escape before we could catch him. If you got close, he’d swing his metal lunchbox like a weapon. And if he ever connected with that thing, it hurt.

We started calling him “The Lunchbox Kid.”

Funny thing is, he actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy later on.

Playground life was mostly innocent and simple. I don’t remember much about the classroom side of elementary school—except for one unforgettable day: November 22, 1963.

I was sitting in Miss Kirkendall’s classroom when another teacher walked in, barely holding back tears, and announced that President Kennedy had been assassinated. Miss Kirkendall explained what that meant, and I remember feeling a strange mix of confusion and sadness. When I got home from school, the news was on all three channels—and it stayed there for days.

Yes, I said three channels. Back then, we had channels 6, 9, and 13. Channel 42 didn’t come along until a few years later.

When I moved on to Leeds High School in 1968, everything changed for me. But that’s a story—or two—for another day.