dinsdag 11 april 2017

Ready-over

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"

18 opmerkingen:

  1. What a great post....and so interesting. I always like to see the old pictures.

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  2. een leuk nostalgisch logje Marianne

    prettige dag

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  3. So different from life as a student today.

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  4. So cute Marianne. And how wonderful that you have these old photos to remind you of that time.
    Here we have adults,usually elderly people who stop the traffic for kids to cross the road in front of schools. They are also there for a while before and after school, but they also get paid to do it!

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  5. Het geeft je op die leeftijd best wel een verantwoordelijkheidsgevoel, denk ik.
    Mooi om die oude foto's te zien!

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  6. People here do that job as well around intersections near our schools, of course, they're adults. Cars will stop for them.

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  7. What wonderful memories you have brought me of my own time wearing the white belt! Thanks for sharing your dear photos, friend

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  8. Interesting memories…This method is alien to me, because we don't have any like this. I have only seen in movies. I love your old photos

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  9. This is fantastic. I am glad that my photo brought back such good memories plus you have the photos too and those are priceless. Thanks for sharing this post, it made me smile.

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  10. It was a completely different age. You still look back with pleasure at what you achieved.

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  11. I was cross gaurd in grade school.
    Coffee is on

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  12. I wore the same belt as a crossing guard in 6th grade. But we had a large STOP sign on a long pole to stop traffic.

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  13. Thank you all for the nice comments, didn't know the US also had "Ready-overs"!

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