Perhaps the first social interaction between little friends happened on the asphalt playground of St. Albert the Great school. The small playground consisted of two sets of monkey bars (one for the girls and one for the boys) and a merry go round in the center. This is where the children of St. Albert’s learned how to interact with other children without much supervision. During recess the teacher would supervise, but could not keep up with all the children. During lunch hour the mothers on lunch duty would supervise but likewise could not keep up with everything going on. Basically the kids were on their own and they loved it.

The parking lot was primarily for soccer games and you could have multiple classes playing multiple soccer games in the parking lot. It was not unusual to have over 100 kids playing soccer in this parking lot on a nice day. These soccer games were so incredibly popular that kids who went home for lunch would gobble down their food and run back to the school grounds just to participate in these soccer games.

The field behind the gym was also used for soccer, although the occasional softball game would break out from time to time. The problem with playing baseball was that you had to bring your glove to the school and most kids did not do this (St. Albert’s did provide the soccer balls).

Hop scotch was very popular with the girls, and you would see chalk outlines on the asphalt as the girls said their rhymes and tossed their stone. A tether ball game was added to the playground which also became popular with both girls and boys.

One day, the boys went outside and noticed that a “gate swing” was added. Dale S would then push kids on the gate swing and right before pushing one would say, “I am going to give you the works in a drawer” (a popular television advertisement by Quasar in the 1960’s) as he gave a big push. The gate swing was eventually removed due to too many children getting injured on it.