Chapter 16 - Gym, Swimming and Squaredancing

1950 - 1957

GYM   The gymnasium and swimming pool were all the way up in the Recreation Building, or the “Rec.” These facilities were in the buildings attached to Lovett Hall adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum. With the exception of Miller School our classroom buildings were quite a long ways from the Rec, and now I wonder how long we were given for travel time. The teachers didn't accompany us, and I can remember playing with the sheep herd that ran freely all over the village or dillydallying one way or another along the pathways. My friend Janet reminded me that we occasionally jumped on the back steps of the carriages that drove visitors on tours around the Village. On snowy days, putting on our leggings and boots and taking them off again must have been time-consuming.

     As for gym class, as Andy says it was entertaining but not instructional. I really enjoyed playing a team sport with a gigantic ball, which we kicked around with our feet while sitting back on our hands on the gym floor (kickball?). We played dodge ball and climbed a ladder on the gym wall. Andy thinks we played musical chairs once in a while. I know we played softball during recess in the upper elementary grades, but I don’t remember that it was ever played during gym. I would imagine we played soccer and basketball, but maybe not.

     In the winter, we sometimes went sledding down the hill near the Suwanee River and other times we ice-skated on the Suwanee. These were very fun times unless the snow caked onto my scarf, mittens and face or my ankles ached. It was not pure undiluted joy but it was a great break from routine.

     We called our teacher “Coachie,” and on the last day of school in sixth grade, he asked us to call him “Marc,” which quite surprised me. Gym class was fine.

SWIMMING      It was a totally different story in swimming. I spent the entire class playing around in the shallow end and talking to the other non-swimmers. As the years went by, the number of non-swimmers dwindled to a determined two, Sue and me. At the end of each class Coachie would ask us non-swimmers to dip our heads under the water. We responded by pinching our noses closed with our right hands and clamping our eyelids shut with our left hands, then sinking under the water for all of a second or maybe two. I don’t remember the coach attempting to teach me how to swim nor doing or saying anything that would upset me. But I know I fixated on him as the reason I didn't swim, so I wonder what my problem was.

     The rule was that in order to swim in the deep end, the student had to swim a full length of the pool doing the Australian crawl. Each time a classmate made the swim, everyone applauded. I never made that swim until the last day of swimming class, when the coach let Sue and me swim the length doing the dog-paddle. Everyone applauded which really surprised me. I thought it was really nice of them.

Aftermath      The summer after I “graduated” from sixth grade, I went to a camp in northern Wisconsin where I learned to swim well in three weeks. I even learned to dive off the diving board in good form. Soon after we started to school that fall in our new junior high schools, our class was invited back to the village for a reunion night, which included an hour or more of free time swimming. Imagine my pleasure in swimming the length of the pool in several different strokes and diving off the board, thinking “Look at me now, Coachie, I’m a good swimmer!”

     My mother told me years later that she could never understand my problem with swimming -- that I had learned to swim the summer before kindergarten but stopped as soon as I started swim class at Greenfield Village. I know I was a rather stubborn child, but I really do wonder what turned Coachie into my swimming nemesis. I'm beginning to think I'll never know the answer to that one...

SQUARE-DANCING taught me a lot of steps and terminology that I've not yet had reason to employ, but you never know. It was sure a lot of fun to learn in any case. A pleasure reserved for Fifth and Sixth graders, we only square-danced on Fridays, and only for a few weeks both years. The lessons were held in Lovett Hall and one of my most vivid memories is the vastness of the space. The ballroom was huge, formal, and beautiful. The teakwood floor was perfectly designed for dance and could handle maybe a hundred couples but we were only ten or twenty (very young) couples. I vividly recall feeling very small, taking up very little space among the acres (that’s how it felt) of beautiful teakwood flooring.

     I think we had to dress up for those Friday lessons – dresses for the girls, jackets and ties for the boys. We were taught as much about the polite world of attending a formal dance as we were about square-dancing.

     We were paired with dance partners, and the boys had to walk up to the girls and ask if we would care to dance, using the polite words they were taught to use for the occasion. We girls accepted our partners’ offers in a very proper way. Then we put our hands partially in their hands, and we’d walk to the dance floor. We understood that there were almost no acceptable reasons to refuse to dance, if asked. I don’t think we wore gloves, because I remember sweaty hands.

     At the end of the season, we made a special presentation in front of our parents and for that we wore our very best party dresses and suits. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience (maybe not the sweaty hands), and I remember fondly the boys’ politeness, which seemed genuine, and how fun it was to have a willing partner to dance with. There were two short girls, Marilyn and me, and two short boys, Bucky and Bernie, and we were always paired, one way or the other. I know Bernie was my partner at the final sixth grade dance performance, and I thought he looked very handsome in his navy blue jacket.