Posted on 10/13/2005 6:31:00 PM PDT by Clive
I've been hanging around playgrounds. No, not like that -- there's no need to call the police, or keep your children locked indoors.
Maybe what I should say is we've been hanging around playgrounds.
You see, I have my own little girl, so my presence among the slides and swings is perfectly legitimate. Like any dad, I'm a slave to my wee one's thrill-seeking demands.
I push, slide and climb, both to make her happy, and to ensure she's safe.
I've found myself wedged inside playground tubes too tiny to comfortably fit a dachshund, and I've smacked my head on steel bars, while helping her onto slides designed for kids and circus contortionists. I hardly even notice the park gravel anymore, as it trickles into my shoes.
It's all in a day's work for a dad. And my daughter loves playgrounds, or at least the swings. The sheer rush of being a 26-lb. pendulum leaves her giggling and wanting more.
No ride makes her day like a good old-fashioned swing-set, and it's the same story for a lot of kids. Swings are the place to be, while the rest of the playground -- a spaghetti of wood, plastic and old rubber tires -- is usually neglected.
The basic swing, the only ride left over from my childhood (and the childhood of anyone raised before basic safety gave way to parenting paranoia) is now the most popular playground attraction.
It wasn't the case back then: swings were fun, but not like the skyscraper-high monkey bars, or slides that required a serious hike to the top, before shooting you back to the ground so fast your stomach felt a full second behind.
I don't have the heart to tell the truth to my daughter, even if she was old enough to understand.
She can't read, so it's safe to print it here. Modern playgrounds are boring.
Seriously -- they're tedious.
Since my playground knowledge contains a gap of about 20 years, can someone please explain what happened to all the good rides?
At what point, between 1985 and 2005, did someone step in and take the fun equipment away, replacing it with safe-and-dreary designs capable of thrilling no one, except over-protective mothers?
I miss things like merry-go-rounds; those spinning platforms kids would whip into a near-blur, before jumping on, clinging to the bars for dear life. We'd hang off the edge, face-down, playing "dropped-it/picked-it-up" with a twig or popsicle stick. Falling off meant nasty, dirt-filled scrapes, and every child had the scars to prove it.
Monkey bars were works of art: There were rocket ships, airplanes, chuckwagons and abstract towers. They were high, cold and dangerous -- and there was no better place to play tag. If you fell, you returned with a cast, or an angry bruise, ready to climb again.
The slides were impossibly tall, and built to ensure the ladder was only one route to the top. Scaling the actual slide, or the metal scaffolding, was far more daring. Especially in winter, when the steel was coated with ice.
As well as slides, there were fireman's poles, which took strong nerves and stronger ankles -- the landings were hard.
The old parks also had horses. Most hung like swings, but one rare type was the pre-motorized equivalent of a mechanical bull.
Long and low, with a row of seats, such horses would buck wildly, as six kids fought to hang on.
And there were see-saws. Nothing like the feeble plastic designs found on today's parks, these were massive planks of wood, rising six feet in the air.
Woe be the child whose partner jumped off, leaving the weighted end to crash down.
There were others, but my memories are hazy. Suffice to say, the best rides combined fear with immense fun, and kids loved them.
Today's playgrounds are low to the ground, with round edges with safety bars and soft gravel all around. It's no wonder many kids prefer to play video games at home -- broccoli gets the blood pumping faster than most modern parks.
Of course, I'll keep taking my little daughter to her swings, so she can laugh, and tell me to push harder.
And someday, when she asks me what the playgrounds were like when I was little, daddy will pretend he can't remember.
I wouldn't want to make her sad.
-
Reminds me of when we used to make cannons out of coke cans, lighter fluid and tennis balls. Those were the days.
Reminds me of when we used to make cannons out of coke cans, lighter fluid and tennis balls. Those were the days
In the 50's we made cannons out 1 1/2 inch pipe, C batteries and cherry bombs. These were dangerous.
Islamofascist terrorist alert! Quick, call the knee-jerks!
Yep...ready to defend against the Red Menace, should they decide to invade..right? :-)
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.
Rubber ice we called it when it was on it's way in, or on it's way out ... and I took the dare (I think I was in Kinnygaht'n), and I broke through, got soaking , freezing wet, laughed it off(outwardly, 'cause y' can't cry in front of your friends), and 'allowed' my mother to smother me in mother's warmth ...
Aw hell ... I think I'm gonna' cry.
Who started this stupid thread, anyway?
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.
They have really cool zip lines at www.visionforum.com
Look in the all-American boys catalog. I also highly recommend the wooden swords and shields.
Oh yah, zip lines rock, your kids will love you. Buy the one made of heavy duty metal, the plastic ones will break in no time, and that is not fun at all.
Yeah, no kidding... The Libs would call kids who do that today terrorists (or at least Columbine wannabes)while saying that Islam is a peaceful religion and that the jerks in Gitmo are not terrorists. I'm only 24 but I remember when it was okay to have cap guns in school. What the hell has happened to our society in a few short decades?
I never really played on swing sets or anything.
I was always out playing kickball or football....
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