Bailey School was three stores tall. The school was built with a fire escape chute going from the 3rd floor to the ground. The chute was about 3-4 feet in diameter. The entrance was in a class room on the east side of the school and the steel chute had a good slope down to the ground. I can't be sure but it seems that the chute was in the middle of the top floor and the exit was at the end of the school. The school periodically held fire drills and all the kids lived for the day they would be in class on the top floor so they could exit by the fire escape chute. The entrance was a small doors in the wall of a class room. There were two doors that opened into the room. As the doors were opened, a metal rod at the top of door jam was reveled which was grabbed on to so the kids could easily sit down and slide down the tube.

Now, certain boys were always selected to go down first so that they could quickly exit the tube, stand up and help each of the following kids to safely get out of the tube by grabbing their arms when they reached the bottom. Why was this necessary? Because, being three stores high and the chute was used quite a bit, which I will explain in a moment, and very slippery. It was not uncommon for certain "helpers" to just happen to miss a kid coming down the chute. This resulted in the kids shooting 4-6 feet out of the chute and landing with a loud thump on their butt in the sand. Everyone thought this was very funny unless you happen to be the kid flying out the chute. I can tell you that to the best of my knowledge, no one was every hurt during the fire drills.

One of the favorite tricks certain kids like to play on the others during the fire drill was to purposely slow down going down. This would stack up the kids in the chute and cause the teachers to yell down the chute that the ones holding up the drill would be severely dealt with at the end of the drill. It was easy to slow down. All you had to do was put the soles of your shoes on the bottom of the chute and press down. The opposite effect, not putting your shoes on the chute and leaning back could easily increase your speed, which if someone was not ready to catch you could send you flying considerable distance out the chutes.

I had mentioned that the chute was very slippery so let me explain why. First, the school held many fire drills and so many kids went down the chute over the years. How many years I am not sure but it certainly had to be quite a few. I believe that the school served about 300 kids in kindergarten through sixth grade and about 50-75 kids could easily use the chute during a fire drill. In addition, the chute was used for play when school was out.

Jim and I, with our friends, spent many days playing around the school yard when school was not in session, such as weekends and summer vacation. The chute was an obvious choice for something to do. The idea was to climb all the way to the top, hold on for dear life and then slid down as fast as you could. You have to remember that the chute was probably at an angle of 30 degrees. And being steel and used for years for fire drills and after school play, the surface was shiny and very, very slippery. It was almost impossible to be all the way up to the double doors on the 3rd floor but it could be done. First you had to make sure that there was no sand inside the mouth of the chute. Sand was our worst enemy as you could not obtain any traction,. even with the very best tennis shoes of that day. No we didn't have the variety of sport shoes available to you kids of today. There was only tennis and basketball shoes that we kids could use on a day by day basis.

With no sand in the chute mouth and a good tennis shoe, a little spit and a large amount of luck you could bend down, climb into the chute, spit on the surface, rub the ball of your shoe in the spit and try to climb as quickly as possible to the top. Now it helped if you also spit on your hands as then you have four parts of your body in contact the with chute surface most of the time. Oh, yes, one other problem we had to face when climbing the chute - heat! You see, during the summer months, the chute, being steel and dark colored, would heat up quite a bit during the day. So if you got to the chute later than mid-day you chances of getting to the top was practically nil due to the excessive temperature of the chute surface. It was difficult to climb as you had to use your hands and the surface was just to hot. We couldn't use gloves as they would be to slippery. So it was your hands or you never got to the top.

The top of the chute during the summer months was, to say the least, like an oven. If you made it all the way there it was not a place you stayed very long. So you had a good reason to get down a quickly as possible. The only thing you had to watch out for on the way down were the other kids. You could never be sure what trick your friends might play on you as you exited the chute at a high rate of speed. If we suspected a trick was coming we always used our shoes to slow down, maybe to a crawl, when we got to the opening to prevent tricks from being played on us.