While far short of qualifying for Mensa, I was gifted with a good memory. So it is that I can distinctly remember something that happened nearly 64 years ago.

My father took a job with the grain elevator in Sibley, Iowa, and we moved there in February 1960. As it turned out, Dad’s job didn’t work out and six weeks later we moved back to Hamilton County in north central Iowa.

Sibley is a nice county seat town of nearly 3,000 in far northwest Iowa. The community is located just seven miles south of the Minnesota state line.

I remember Sibley positively for several reasons: I had a wonderful sixth-grade teacher, I liked my classmates in my new school and there was a place downtown where you could buy a bottle of Coca Cola for five cents. Imagine that: a bottle of pop for just a nickel.

All of that said, the one negative I remember from Sibley (almost in Minnesota) was the winter temperature. Listening to the radio news in the morning, Sibley was often the coldest spot in northwest Iowa.

The cold factor, however, did not stop me from my first extra-curricular activity in my new school. Sibley was sufficiently populated to have a School Safety Patrol program for sixth-graders and when given the opportunity to sign up I did so immediately.

Back when I was 12 I was thinking I would like to be a cop someday. In Jewell, one of our neighbors was an Iowa Highway Patrolman and I deeply admired his sleek, black Plymouth cruiser with big fins and a single cherry on top.

Being a school Safety Patrol guy would be as close to being a cop as a 12-year-old kid could get. I signed-up, read the provided brochure and was assigned a corner to guard.

It was cold out there in February but I took pride in helping ensure the safety of my schoolmates. I proudly wore the across-the-chest safety belt on which had been pinned a genuine American Automobile Association badge.

The morning detail was the coldest, of course, but I was happy to be of service and I felt like a bigshot. The noon shift was a little warmer and on sunny days it could even be pleasant.

Then it happened. A carload of what appeared to be high school boys drove right through the stop sign at my corner. Fortunately, no one was attempting to cross the street at the time but the incident presented a danger to my schoolmates.

In my prepubescent voice I shouted at the carload of law breakers but they just kept on speeding down the street.

I quickly pulled a pen from my shirt pocket (I was fully nerd-compliant) and wrote the license plate number on my hand. I noted the color of the car and was sure my teacher would want to know about this flagrant contempt for the law.

Alas, when I returned to the classroom and excitedly shared my news of unlawful behavior my teacher was not as livid with the scofflaws as I was (or as I expected him to be.)

Soon enough class resumed and the matter moved to the back of my mind. Be assured, however, that nearly 64 years later I remember the law breakers.

I continued to serve on the Safety Patrol until we moved back to Hamilton County.

My parents had already sold our house in Jewell so we moved onto a farm place north of Jewell that was a half mile into the Kamrar school district. Schools the size of Kamrar (there were only about 14 in my sixth-grade class) did not have anything like a Safety Patrol nor did the community need one.

All these years later, however, I still remember my six weeks of service to my school as a member of the Central School Safety Patrol in Sibley.

My recollections of the AAA School Safety Patrol prompted a Google search and, sure enough, the program remains active. The AAA website indicates that the program is now 103 years old and active throughout the United States and 30 other countries.

Best of all, the website reports that, “…The program (has) contributed to the steady decline of student pedestrian (ages 5-14) U.S. deaths — a 24% decrease since 2010.”

I wonder what ever happened to the hotrodders who ran the stop sign.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2023 by Huisman Communications.