Our School Picnic Was Quite A Ride

Well, it certainly has been a long, cold, lonely winter, hasn’t it?

I don’t know how you feel, but I’ve never looked more forward to the start of summer than I have this year.

Officially, summer begins around the 20th of June each year. But where I come from – the sticky, steamy Midwest – nobody considers late June to be the start of summer. That notion reminds me of the TV meteorologists who report the temperature as it’s recorded at the airport. As legendary comedian George Carlin often noted, “that’s stupid, ‘cuz I don’t know anybody who lives at the airport!"

Summer, in truth, always comes earlier.

When I was a kid, the official start of summer was a no-brainer. I could pinpoint the exact date and place of my personal summer solstice: it was on the first Tuesday in June, and it took place in the schoolyard of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Parish in South St. Louis.

It was the date of our annual parish school picnic.

School picnic day was always special, although at times, a little surreal.

Apparently state law required we actually START picnic day in the classroom (I’m only half kidding here). So we did, but that charade was conducted with a wink and a nod. I mean, we were wearing shorts and T-shirts instead of our school uniforms, for goodness sake.

Some of my buttoned-down teachers were wearing Keds.

I can’t be sure, but I think my third grade teacher, Sister Leonilda, might have worn culottes one year, although, if that did happen, my mind likely has suppressed that memory over time, with good reason.

One year, a parish priest showed up in flip-flops, or as we called them, thongs. (If you don’t believe we were referring to shoes back then, do a Google search on “thongs” sometime. Just don’t do it from work).

At Our Lady of Sorrows, popularly known as OLS (pronounced Oh-ehl-ESS), we always took great pride in our school picnic. With all due respect to my friends from other grade schools in our quadrant of the city, the OLS picnic was best.

It was the Granddaddy. The Big Kahuna. The King of the Hill. The Top Dog.

I make those bold statements, first, from the perspective of sheer size. I found an aerial image of the OLS schoolyard the other day and did some old fashioned Jethro Bodine cipherin’. The picnic grounds back then measured 550 feet long by about 200 feet wide. That’s 110,000 square feet of sheer school picnic pleasure. By comparison, a full football field contains about 58,000 square feet, and for my money, doesn’t provide nearly the excitement.

Every square inch was a wonderful, sensory adventure.

Just outside the cafeteria, nearest the school, sat the “midway” – where we could try our luck and waste our money on games of chance such as Skee-Ball and the duck pond.

One year, a few years after graduation, my buddy Tom happened to notice that a teacher who had tormented him throughout his grade school career was running the show in the ring toss booth.

In an act of defiance and chutzpah that won him a lifetime of admiration among his peers, Tom reared back and fired all ten of his rings directly at the teacher’s noggin, connecting on a few pitches, much to the delight of everyone, except, of course, the now-tormented teacher.

Tom definitely got his quarter’s worth.

A little farther away were the kiddie rides. We were far too cool to be seen near those, so we ventured a few feet farther to the rides we considered to be more our style – the “big kid” rides -- rides like the Scrambler and the Tilt-A-Whirl, the latter of which provided enough repetitive motion to send a kid with even the heartiest soul and strongest stomach to the dreaded Sidelines of School Picnic Sickness.

As every kid knew, that was a fate worse than death. Usually it meant sitting under one of the big bingo tents with “The Gossiping Gals” -- your mother and the other moms of the parish -- in an involuntary "time out" designed to settle your flopping stomach. To know that a big, hedonistic carnival was going on just a few feet away while you served an hour in this undeserved “penalty box” provided us youngsters with a valuable lesson about how unfair life could be.

Once back in the game, it was time to move on to The Scrambler -- a favorite of everyone, but especially for us grade school guys. If there’s a “manual for living” for an adolescent boy, it surely includes a chapter titled “Strategy for Riding ‘The Scrambler’ With a Girl.”

The secret was to board one of the ride’s compartments BEFORE the girl got in, ensuring you stayed on the inside of the car as it was flung to the far reaches of the ride’s geographical footprint with great velocity. You thus were guaranteed to have your body press up against hers – shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip - several times per ride. That, as any adolescent boy can attest, was a really, really big deal.

“Guys, I took Debbie on The Scrambler! I squashed against her six times! I think she was wearin' perfume!”

After experiencing these moderately thrilling rides, it was time to turn our attention to the big leagues.

At the far end of the school grounds stood the shining gem of each year’s picnic: The Rock O Planes. If you look closely at the image above, you can see this ride soaring majestically over the OLS picnic grounds, in a photo I took a few years ago.

The Rock O Planes were an imposing, yet magnificent three-story tribute to the intoxicating combination of childhood fear and eager anticipation.

Like its toned-down cousin the Ferris wheel, the Rock O Planes ride featured a giant upright wheel that rotated forward or backward rather innocently. But the Rock O Planes took things up a notch. The open-air “seats” that were featured in the Ferris wheel were replaced by enclosed, egg-shaped torture chambers that could be manipulated by inhabitants to either spin wildly or lock into an upside down position for the entirety of the three-minute Rock O Planes experience.

I’ve heard the Rock O Planes are part of the basic training regimen of the Navy Seals, but I think that may be an urban myth.

This ride might as well have been called The Vomitorium.

Speaking of which, anyone who stood beneath the Rock O Planes while the ride was in operation had an equal chance of having either loose change -- or your classmate Dave’s upchucked lunch – land on your head.

Each of us had to decide if the gamble was worth it.

Strange, isn’t it? Most days I can’t remember why I walked to the kitchen, but for some reason, these memories have stuck – 50 years later.

Unfortunately, memories are about all I have left. Things have changed over five decades. I no longer live in St. Louis. I’ve had four heart attacks, so no more “big kid” rides for me. The picnic grounds have shrunk, with new building additions swallowing up some of that expansive picnic ground real estate I remember as a kid.

Our Lady of Sorrows School has closed, although to their credit, parish leaders have kept the tradition of the picnic intact. It will be held June 4th. If you’re in St. Louis the first Tuesday in June, check it out.

As for me, it appears given these changes, just like the boys of Steely Dan, I’m truly Never Going Back to My Old School.

But it’s not necessarily the end of the story. Somewhere out there, I’m sure there are a few school picnics in my neck of the woods. I’m eager to find a few, just to relive a few memories.

So I’ll spend the next few weeks scoping them out, and I plan to give at least one of them a whirl.

At my age, maybe not a Tilt-A-Whirl, but a whirl nonetheless.

As always, thanks for reading.