A right of passage for the young male at Case De Ora Elementary was being recruited for the Crossing Guard. There were a limited number of uniforms, a red sweater like thing and a cap, and the staffs sporting stop signs were getting beat up by the time our sixth grade came along. This was back in the day when girls could be excluded from things based on gender, and they were excluded from the Crossing Guard for sure. Their domain was the ball and sporting good check out at recess, and they took their revenge often enough, doleing out the choice kick balls and teather balls to their same sex sisters and sticking the boys with deflated broken down gear. I don’t recall having any interest in being a crossing guard but its greatness was thurst upon me early in the 6th grade school year. There was a morning shift and an afternoon shift on the guard. The afternoon shift was the most desirable as you did not have to get to school half an hour early to do it, being that I just lived accross the street I think I was recrutied for ease of service more than anything else. The drill was that you met the teacher in charge that week behind the Cafatorium where a short set of steps lead up to the back stage area that served double duty as the Cross Guard room. Mostly the teachers just unlocked the door and made a b line to the lounge to get some coffee, a danish and have a smoke. A couple of teachers liked to make a para military exercise of it and make us march single file out to the corner to our posts. The Viet Nam conflict was in full swing, but we did not talk about it much if at all in school, we just watched it on TV while we ate dinner. Once we made it up to the street the Duty Sgt. of the day would assign a corner to each of the four guards and take his post at the corner nearest the bus stop with his staff. The Sgt. at arms staff did not have a stop sign attached, it was for directing the Guards Men to either stand at ease or lean their signs out into the road to stop up coming traffic. The Sgt. at arms also held the whistle, passed from mouth to mouth each day after a wipe with a foul tasting disinfectant swab. As kids came to school they would wait at what ever corner to be allowed to cross under the protection of the guard. Most drivers were pretty good about paying attention at the school corner but there was one incident where an older gentlemen decided to ignore the guards stop sign and just went rolling right through the intersection. The Sgt. on duty took down the Lic Plate and ran to the office, the police were called, and the man was pulled over down the hill as he was leaving the Mayfair Grocery to return home. He was informed that for all intents and purposes the Crossing Gaurd was a sanctified arm of the law and he was bound to obey their stop signs just like any other. That was a pretty cool day. I got tired of the guard after a while, it became clear to me that it was more and more of a recruting ground for the ROTC, and I knew that the ROTC was just a stepping stone to the military and then to Nam. The war had being going on for as long as any of us kids could recall, for all we knew we would be drafted after High School. Part of me did not want anyone thinking I was cut out for the military so I gave up most of my shifts as soon as I could.
