I need a break – we all need a break – from the election, so today I’m going to write about jungle gyms, specifically the one in a black and white photo – circa 1920s or so – someone posted to Facebook the other day.
You should see this thing. It’s a lawyer’s dream and an insurance company’s nightmare – metal pipes, without protective coatings, no wood chips or rubber mats to cushion falls, no warning signs saying don’t do this or that, no netting, no safety monitor with a whistle.
Somehow, despite any of that, the kids seem to be having a ball. Some sit or balance like wire-walkers atop the highest bars, which are 20 feet high. Others swing on swings hung 10 glorious feet off the ground. How they got on the seat is anybody’s guess. Under the whole construct: park benches that would easily snap a falling kid’s neck. The daily casualty count from this rig must have been huge. It’s Broken Arm City, to be sure.
But my god it looks fun.
Our school’s playground wasn’t quite as impressive but it still had stuff that would never pass muster with today’s Safety Nazis. Our monkey bars were way too tall, our slide was way too long and got way too hot, and our swings flew way too high.
My favorite was the merry-go-round. Man, four of us could get that sucker spinning like crazy. Once, just to see what would happen, our buddy Dean had us tie him to it with jump ropes and spin him for the last 10 minutes of recess.
He didn’t walk straight for a week. You couldn’t do that now, of course – the playground attendants would go nuts. Those involved in “the incident” would surely get suspended, if not brought up on child endangerment charges. Local TV might even do a story: “Is your child safe on the playground … from other kids?”
That’s the way schools are these days. Life, too.
That’s a good thing, of course. Safety first. Blah, blah, blah.
But for all the safety and security built into today’s society, I do think kids – whose lives are wrapped in bubble wrap and hovered over by helicopter parents – are missing out on something that my generation took for granted.
Let’s call it freedom. Or maybe a certain sense of adventure, writ small. When I was a kid (yes, I know, cue the sappy string music), every kid in the neighborhood would get up on weekends or summer days, gulp some Lucky Charms, then race out the door.
We’d be gone all day jumping banana bikes off ramps, blowing things up with firecrackers, playing ditch in the woods, damming creeks, playing completely unauthorized football, carving sticks for sword fights, jumping off swings, etc. We’d only go home when mom hollered out the door for dinner or the streetlights came on. Our lives, in short, were a lot like the movies “Sandlot” or “Stand By Me.”
Not today. Unsupervised children running around and doing God knows what? No way – it wouldn’t happen. Too dangerous. Today, kids’ lives are structured, supervised, tracked and sanitized for their protection, and thank god for it.
But I’m still glad I grew up when I did.
So am I, Andy!
When I was 12 (or so) in the late 1960’s I was into model rockets and many other “dangerous” things. Before we discovered Estes rockets, my dad, a munitions expert in WWII, encouraged us budding rocket scientists by explaining how the simple ingredients for gunpowder could be purchased as the local drug store, mixed in various portions to be tested for maximum burn, and then packed into thin cardboard tubes which we tested in alley. Our mostly smoldering efforts were rewarded with one explosion, however, and thankfully no one was hurt, but what a LEARNING experience in so many ways!
While that is one rather extreme story, the curiosity I was allowed to explore by my wonderful parents has kept me on a lifelong path of questioning everything.
For fun see: https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Book-Boys-Conn-Iggulden/dp/0062208977
Yes! Our playground out at Rankin Elementary School, had a death trap playground! Tall monkey bars, the prohibitive looooong slide, the spinning thing, tether ball (I can feel the arm burns as I type) and a small woods we could wander into with a great climbing tree on its edge. Great memories! Thanks for the trip!
Loved that playground!
Talking with my daughter, reminded her of when she would go to city park and pool for the whole day. Sometimes she came home for lunch, some not and I didnt care.
One day she was especially late and I couldn’t remember what she was wearing when she left. I tended to see my mommy shortcomings in newspaper headlines or police interrogations.
After that I tried to make note of her clothing choice for the day. That was the extent of my “helicoptering”
We had a big alert on our next door neighborhood social media last week! Two teen boys walking in the street waving a towel. That set off some folks. Must be up to something.
I sure miss all the fun we had. Using our imaginations to come up with neat (and sometimes dangerous) things was interesting with 13 kids just on our side of the block!
It’s a different world now, and the “Safety Nazis” (I love it !) definitely did put a damper on the fun. It caused a lot of kids to sit in front of TV’s and computers watching things with blood and gore and sexual innuendoes. The Safety Nazis aren’t doing too good of a job there.
But thanks for refreshing our memories of fun once again!
You’re right – the safety nazis haven’t touched video games. I love them, myself, I really do, but too much of anything is bad. I think piddling on a cell phone has replaced video games though. Our son has gone silent from staring at his phone.
Yes, these kids won World War II because they were just that daring!
We have raised a generation or two of pussy of people who need a guarantee that nothing bad is going to happen to them.
God bless those older “kids”!
That should be pussy cats who need a guarantee …….
Those kids were also more physically fit than most of today’s kids. Running around and riding bikes builds more fitness that watching TV and computer screens does.
Nah, we won WWII because we had the people, the manufacturing and most importantly the will to commit ourselves to freedom.
The playground at Hughes Elementary (Essexville, now converted for use as a Community High School) had an *asphalt* playground; on that were a VERY tall metal slide and one a little shorter, a number of very tall swingsets with sling-style seats (boy, could we get some altitude with those!), monkey bars, and I think even a merry-go-round or two? I don’t recall any major disasters there until one time a boy the year ahead of me fell from the top of that VERY tall slide and apparently cracked his skull – warnings went around about that by way of the teachers, and I think that slide eventually got taken down (by the way, the kid recovered, graduated with his class, and suffered no lingering effects). But the old playground area remains asphalt to this day – albeit, repurposed – while the new playground area is on real grass!
Thanks for the LOL about you and your friends tying the kid to the Merry-go round. I’m still smiling at the scene. I am a child of the forties and have so many memories of playing outside. We dug for treasures, played hopscotch, tag after dark, softball in a bachelor’s yard. He had 4 weeping willow trees that made perfect bases. My cousin broke a disc of ice from a dog bowl over my head, and I didn’t even see a doctor. We rode bikes without helmets, went trick or treating and never once had our candy checked. Went barefoot all day.
Got to wonder how the heck we made it this far. Sure was a great childhood.
Isn’t it amazing how we all survived those hazardous playgrounds, bikes and the world without helmets or being bubblewrapped. Didn’t even have carseats when I raised my children! The only people I know who lost children happened after they were adults. How times have changed!
Spring day. One room rural school (K–8). 32 folks including the teacher. Teacher who had graduated from “Central Michigan Teachers College” the previous Spring. Me in 5th grade. Teacher notices a group in the corner of the yard doing “something.” She comes out of the building to see what we are up to. She has no idea what “Mumblely Peg” is. She watches for a few minutes, then one of the older boys hands her his jack knife and tells her how to make the first throw. After a few minutes she is doing pretty good. Then we all traipse back in to finish the morning studies.
Can you imagine what would happen today if kids were playing a knife throwing game on the playground? Who knows how the SWAT team would handle it.
By the way, all involved went on to become responsible, law abiding, citizens.
I swam across Bush Lake in Holly in the ’60s with my friends, while they rested on the sand bar in the middle I had to bounce to breathe. The water was about eye level! I got the last laugh and took off swimming, no way they’d let me be first across the lake.
We did a lot of dangerous things as kids, we used to hop freight trains moving faster than I can run. The playground equipment and rules were far from what they are today. I remember when they banned letting us play tackle football during recess vividly. The school nurse had to remove Craig or Chris Brookes (twins) two front teeth from the back ofTom Bentlley’s head!
Andy – I forgot to mention our usual game was called “Kill The Man With The Football”!
You could pass the ball off to avoid the physical punishment, I was willing to take the ball and the hit for friends. We weren’t so politically correct in the ’60s, the game was also called “Smear The Queer” and we were under age 12 so didn’t know any better.
Yeah, we played that but I think we called it Red Dog or something like that
Oh the fun filled and quite often the work filled days of my youth.
Times that we swam in our neighbors dug pond with no adult supervision. Playing flashlight tag after dark. Riding our bikes down dirt roads.
Then going to stay with cousins at the family farms.
Milking cows by hand. That is very tiring on the fingers. Cleaning the barn of manure left by the cows.
Riding the hay wagons to and from the field and then either unloading the hay off the wagon or stacking the hay in the hayloft.
Then on some days we would swim in the circular tank that held water for cows to drink out of.
Riding on top of the one neighbors pickup trucks that was loaded down with about 30 bales of hay or straw for his horses. He he drive the the truck down the road about 25 to 30 mph. When he came to a stop sign, my brother and I would hang on to the ropes that held the hay in place.
Just so many things that the kids of the 1950s’ and 1960s’ did that would drive the safety nazis completely insane. Too many to list.
I needed stitches a couple of times but never broke any bones until I was an adult. Growing up in the ’60s/’70s we were expected to look out for our own safety. Not just our own but for our siblings and friends. For some reason I got tagged as the most responsible, it was a joke that I was the nanny when I participated in many of the dangerous activities. I was sort of the safety guide and they listened to my advice, “If you get hurt they’re going to blame me” so you better do it the way I told you to.
clearly, many have had similar experiences. Mine was growing up across an open field that developers turned into Dowdall Elementary School. The new Mt. Everest in my ‘hood became the most talked about challenge: who had the balls to climb the privacy wall erected at one of the entrances that made it easier than cow pies to ascend, to the roof, Alice? Once upon the roof, more balls!! Yes, I retrieved those under-inflated redish rubber balls that ultimately called back, “Game over!!” once landing upon that roof, ever more. Damn, the lessons I learned ON elementary school! And most, now witnessed by you, OUTSIDE the confines of the actual classroom. Many thanks to my brothers of the Kosis Family who taught me that the coolest stuff in the hood happened just across the street, but not inside that insidious thing called a school.
“Everybody, kick with your left foot!” “Hey Coach! My friend Larry is left handed?!?!?”
Andy — sorry , the police execution in Saginaw was Milton Hall —not Milton Barnes — so Google Milton hall Saginaw execution to see the cell phone video — sorry this is in the wrong place, but I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the proper thought string —
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Thanks. But writers are invitation only.