Remember When?: Winter Fun at School

Nowadays, winter weather can take the fun out of school recess. But, in the 1950s and '60s at St. Anthony School, we were allowed to have great fun on winter days making wonderful memories.

What did children do for fun during those days? Well, if we were kept indoors due to harsh conditions, we would play cards, such as euchre — we remember playing as young as fifth grade. We became culturally enriched by playing the Authors card game, which introduced us to classic authors like Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and Edgar Allan Poe. There was also checkers, Parcheesi, Chinese Checkers, and an extremely popular ring toss game that greatly appealed to both boys and girls.

On snowy days, sleds were packed into spacious trunks of cars or tossed into the back of pick-up trucks — whichever your carpool driver owned — and were transported to school for outdoor recess fun. On these days, and in general, on cold days, the girls would don long, warm pants under their required dresses or skirts to be protected from the snow and cold. When the recess bell finally rang, we would quickly gobble our sack lunch and chug our bottle of milk so we could grab our sleds and rush to the nearby sledding hill. Then the joyful sounds of children’s laughter and squeals of excitement filled the air as we made as many trips as possible down the big hill. If the conditions were right and we got off to a good fast start, we could slide all the way to the second hill and duck under barbed wire fences down to the creek. If we were especially good with our timing, we would take off just before the recess bell rang and extend our recess by at least five minutes.

In addition to these activities, we remember snowball fights in which even the good sisters would sometimes participate. Back then, the word “liability” wasn’t a part of anyone’s vocabulary. How blessed we are to be able to reminisce about the winter days of our youth when life was simple, carefree, and so much fun!