A post of Bill Burke of "Somewhere in Ireland" about a woman who helps children to cross the road safely near a school, brought back memories of my own time as a crossing guard. In the fifties I lived in Amsterdam and not far from our school was an intersection that children had to cross to reach the school. The students from the highest grade of the elementery schools in Amsterdam might be a "klaar-over" ( "ready-over" ) as we were called. We were indentified by a white belt having a band running diagonally over the shoulder. At the band you could hang the "fried-egg", the stop sign. This is me at twelve years old in 1958.
This was my older brother at the same age.
Usually we were with two together and you had to be present half an hour before school at the crossing and after school as long as there were still children out of school. So you could leave class early and came in later.
This is also my brother with a fellow "ready-over". Our official name was "crossing guard" but as we had to say "ready over" when we raised our sign and the children could start walking, everybody named us "ready-overs".
As I look now we were very young but traffic in Amsterdam in the fifties was not very crowded, a few cars or cyclists and they drove not so fast, they always stopped for us. We also walked to school without parents just on your own.
A photo from internet shows the outfit we weared for rainy days.
Linking to "Our World Tuesday"
Linking to "Our World Tuesday"
