Elements of Time: The Crossing Guard

By Craig: He stands on the street corner every morning and afternoon. I have noticed him there for many years. He waves to every car that passes, a mechanical motion of his hand that seems to be perpetually raised. Only the fingers move in response to the passing cars, as he waits for the school bell to ring as it has done in perpetuity for many years from September to June. He is around 80 years old, a rather large man with a healthy weather beaten face. He is spry for his age, and although he is now in the twilight of his life he still exudes a strength that others half his age could not muster. In his day he might have been a man who others turned to when a dangerous situation arose. It would have been only natural, for here stood a man that knew what it was all about. He is the crossing guard.

     When I was in elementary school back in the 1970s, I can remember being fascinated with all of the old junk that was left in the storage room behind the gymnasium. I don't remember exactly when my fancy for things of a bygone age came to be, but it was early on in my life. It might have been the fact that I found it hard to believe that there was actually a time before my existence. Even today I still cannot quite fathom the fact that the world will get along just fine without ME. In fact, perhaps even better, since, after I am gone there will be one less creature consuming the limited resources of our dainty little planet. But, alas,someone will take my place, perhaps two, or three new people will be born the moment that I expire. Anyway, before I digress too much from the subject at hand I will now return to the old junk in the school storage room. If I recall correctly, the school was built in 1939. Why I remember this I cannot say, but I either read it somewhere, or somebody might have told me after I asked, since I use to, and still do ask people when we are discussing the past if they can be troubled by recalling a date. Most of the time the person cannot remember, or gives an approximate date, but sometimes I receive a strange look, as if they are getting ready to tell me "Who cares?" Oh well...anyway, I attended this school from the time I was 5, in 1973, until I graduated from elementary school in 1980. There was 40 years of junk that had accumulated in that storage room. There were old chairs, and tables that should have been thrown out decades earlier. There were boxes of old school books that dated from the 1930s and 1940s that still regarded F.D.R. or Harry Truman as the United States President, and George VI as the King of England. However, the thing that fascinated me the most was an antiquated metal sign that was as tall as a person. It was the likeness of a police officer in his dress blues, smiling, wearing a white glove with his arm extended. He was holding a bright yellow sign that said "SLOW SCHOOL ZONE." The sign was weather beaten, as if it had seen countless days of use in a bygone time. The paint chipped off in flakes and sheets. I wondered when it had last seen use? A decade before? Perhaps two decades? Obviously somebody had made a conscious decision to retire it, but keep it. For what purpose? Why not throw it in the scrap metal yard? Had there possibly been a plan to restore it? And then, like most things, more important issues developed until it was unceremoniously forgotten in the storage closet? It has been 32 years since I left that school. I have never been back inside. Perhaps it is still there, pushed further back into the recess' of the room holding company with a 40 year old mop and bucket, and some old chalk erasers and blackboards.

    There he stands, the crossing guard, who, if I did not know any better was the older version of the vintage sign from my childhood. They look similar... eerily similar, as if the older man had modeled for the sign in his youth. The hand...the friendly smile... aged, but still exuding a remote whiff of authority. I pass by and wave, and smile.