The ground was white with frost this morning, but it quickly melted away and except for tender plants, no harm was done.  The weather has been beautiful, but there's a definite chill that's typical of October.

I was reminded this morning of those chilly fall mornings when I was riding my bicycle to school from our home on Cabot Plain.  I remember enjoying the smell of the leaves and even the cold air. I guess as a teenager my hands and feet didn't get cold at the first small draft like they seem to now.  That was before girls wore jeans or even slacks to school, too.  We had to wear dresses or skirts - and one morning as I came down Bond Hill onto the pavement in Cabot Village I was rushing so I wouldn't be late to class and as I stood up to peddle faster, my foot slipped off the peddle and I went down hard onto the pavement, peeling a layer of skin off my leg from my knee to my ankle.  I brushed off the dirt as best I could and made it to school where my home room teacher sent me to the Home Economics room to cleaned up.  There was grit and gravel embedded in my leg, but with a little soap and water, I got it fairly well cleaned and the bleeding stopped.  Then the Home Ec teacher put some kind of salve on it - it might have been Vaseline. All I remember is that the wound began to weep in rivulets, soaking my ankle sock and shoe, and the pain was awful.  I expect the trip home that afternoon was no picnic, either, but I don't recall much about that.  I think I asked to go home but wasn't allowed to.

Today I met the combined Cabot/Plainfield student group again.  They spent more time at the Historical Society building and had certain things they wanted to see again and had some questions.  Someone had read about things school kids did at recess a few years ago and mentioned those activities would not be allowed today.  I'm not sure what they had come across, but when I was in school on the Plain, we always seemed to have some game going.   I remember playing soft ball, kick ball, tag, pump pump pull away, dodge ball, crack the whip and kick the can.  Games went in cycles, and some of them I really didn't enjoy, like being the kid on the end of the line in crack the whip. One of the favorite past times was walking the board fence that enclosed the school grounds on three sides.  The fence slanted downward sharply to cross a small brook in a couple of places and that was a challenge to keep your balance.  Sometimes we fell off and got a little wet, but it never seemed to bother us, and nobody got seriously hurt.  The only playground equipment we had was a set of two rope swings hung from a tall, sturdy wooden frame firmly planted in the ground and well braced.  That got lots of use.  There were wooden seats so we could jump off easily, sometimes making a less than graceful landing - and we had to watch out that the wooden seat didn't clip us in the back of the head when we were down.  I guess that's why swings these days have canvas seats.  They're probably safer, but I can't imagine they are very comfortable.

In high school there would usually be a ball game of some sort going on at recess and noon hour on the common in front of school.  One year I remember Joe Begin and Larry Thompson spent a lot of time boxing in the school yard.  They might have been practicing for a competition of some kind.  During the winter, we could go into the gym, which was the former Methodist church building across the common from the school.  We would practice basketball or play ping pong.  Sometimes one of the teachers would join in. I don't remember that there were strict rules about how we spent our time outside of the classrooms.

Out of curiosity, I searched the internet to find out more about what kids do at recess these days, and I found even recess may not exist in some schools.  Well, darn!  Here is a list of things that are disappearing from schools today. I have to wonder how kids learn to stand up for themselves or for others, settle differences, learn to be a good loser or graceful winner, or have any creativity left.  And how do they burn off all the natural energy growing kids have?  Here's another site I got a laugh out of.  I'm pretty sure our local schools don't go as far as those mentioned, and the kids I met today seem to be just fine.  I'm looking forward to working with them as they continue putting together pod casts of what they are learning about the history of their town.