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Reminds me of when we used to make cannons out of coke cans, lighter fluid and tennis balls. Those were the days.
those massive, yet safe, wooden structures that are called playgrounds... my boys always climb up the outside of them. parent look over towards me like i should be yelling at them to get down or something.
I remember all that and more. We had WW2 surplus equipment to climb all over--a tank, a couple of anti-aircraft guns, even a fighter plane although that was hoisted on concrete pylons. All gone now.
I also had a friend whose father was a welder and came up with some beauts for us to play on in his backyard. I won't go into detail but picture one of those toys which attach by a suction cup and have a spring to whip the top back and forth. Now picture it large enough to hold an adult inside a cage and you have the best playground equipment ever. I'm surprised any of us survived to puberty. I can remember a lot of bruises but nothing serious.
A park near my folks' home still has one of those high-rise (about 20') slides with no cage or high edges or anything to keep a kid from taking a tumble off the top. I guess the kids in my old hometown are just smart enough not to kill themselves. On the other hand, maybe people thought about purifying the gene pool back then. ;)
Then there were the informally contrived joys of the gravel pit and the rope swings across the canal. Oh man, I'm getting nostalgic.
As the man said... "First, you kill all the lawyers!" ;^)
I remember all that and more. We had WW2 surplus equipment to climb all over--a tank, a couple of anti-aircraft guns, even a fighter plane although that was hoisted on concrete pylons. All gone now.
I also had a friend whose father was a welder and came up with some beauts for us to play on in his backyard. I won't go into detail but picture one of those toys which attach by a suction cup and have a spring to whip the top back and forth. Now picture it large enough to hold an adult inside a cage and you have the best playground equipment ever. I'm surprised any of us survived to puberty. I can remember a lot of bruises but nothing serious.
A park near my folks' home still has one of those high-rise (about 20') slides with no cage or high edges or anything to keep a kid from taking a tumble off the top. I guess the kids in my old hometown are just smart enough not to kill themselves. On the other hand, maybe people thought about purifying the gene pool back then. ;)
Then there were the informally contrived joys of the gravel pit, the rope swings across the canal, frozen ponds and sledding hills out in the country. Oh man, I'm getting nostalgic.
Blame the lawyers. Playgrounds aren't the only thing they've ruined for everyone else.
This is exactly why I'm building my own playground in the backyard for the kids. I'm using 20 foot pipe to build the swingset and slide. I want this thing to be fun for the kids until they get married. None of this three foot tall swingset for $199 at Toys R Us junk for my kids. What's even better is that my wife just insisted that I put in a zip line for the kids too! (they are 1 and 3 now)
Guess it's all what you had then and where you are now.
I never really played on swing sets or anything.
I was always out playing kickball or football....
Of course litigation is the cause of funless playgrounds. I knew it wasn't a fun world anymore when my new chainsaw instructions suggested 'not to use the chainsaw when angry'.
Good post...brings back some great memories...
The playground also had all kinds of equipment that we loved. By today's standards all of it would be considered unsafe. Oddly, no one I know ever died or got seriously injured from playing there. We had the best playground in the area, but I think all that equipment is long gone. Those were the days.
Nothin like the lawsuit lottery to ruin everyones fun.
You all know what the difference between a dead skunk and a dead lawyer in the middle of the road is right?
I went back to visit my old neighborhood pool. No high diving board. How's a kid supposed to stand a chance of clearing the diving well rope?!
Funny, I can relate. My dad who's 80, finally got around to having all of our family's 8mm video tape burned onto DVD. I have 7+ hours of absolute mayhem with myself and three brothers, mom and dad preserved in digital form.
I scare myself watching this stuff. We had toys that would probably be totally illegal to sell in the US now. We had every crazy vomit inducing swing / spinning mechanism known to modern man in our back yard.
I can be seen with no shirt, no shoes, no helmet no pads of any sort racing down the hill at the end of my street doing a handstand on my skateboard.
HA!
To be young again. :)
Oh sure.. it's all fun & games till someone gets an eye put out!
I remember when the swing seats were a 1" thick piece of oak bolstered by aluminum or iron mounts to the chain that you AND a friend could sit on, and it would hold you. Of course, I also remember the teacher telling us six times every recess not to go near the swings, and the blood and stitches on a buddy's forehead when he failed to heed that advice. Those swings were still a lot more fun than the limp rubber things that hurt your hip bones when you just sit in them.
I know in Toronoto they went around and tore down a whole bunch of perfectly good playgrounds built with pressure-treated lumber, the kind that replaced the oh so "dangerous" metal playground equipment I enjoyed as a child. They decided that since the pressure treated wood contained arsenic (I think it was arsenic, anyways) that it might present some sort of danger to the children. Nevermind that a child would probably have to spend all day every day licking the playground equipment to get enough arsenic or whatever to do any harm, they tore them down. Also a lot of perfectly good equipment was torn down because it didn't meet the new standards - no foot deep layer of rubbery stuff all around, etc. Of course they didn't have money to replace all these playgrounds, so now the kids that live in those areas are SOL. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
You know it's a really sad commentary on the world today when you can look back on the 70s with fondness and nostalgia, but for everything that was bad about the 70s we weren't nearly as screwed up then as we are now.
Playgrounds don't stand a chance against Playstations and gameboys.
We have lost a lot, along the way, haven't we?