Up for a Park Day?
Memories about my childhood park.
1. It had a long metal slide with the metal ladder that in the summer got so ungodly-like hot that it became a dare as to who could stand to climb up it.
2. And then once you climbed the hot ladder, there was the matter of going down a metal slide in the burning sun when you’re all sweaty and sticky in Florida’s summer humidity.
3. The swing sets were even better. Hard wood boards that gave me splinters.
4. Not to mention the dirt from the chains would rub off on my sweaty palms.
5. They transitioned from hard wood swings to those black rubber ones, the kind where if you wore shorts, then your thighs were bound to stick to the swing, and when you stood up, an imprint was left behind.
6. And to think how much I LOVED it.
Prior to third grade, my favorite park was Lake Lucina at Merrill and Rogero Road in Jacksonville. After third grade, my family moved and the park du jour was the one up the hill from my house. A brand new park at the time, it featured all wood structures and woodchips on the ground.
7. There were two trampolines at this park. I use the word trampoline for lack of a better word. It was a springy 3 foot square that you could bounce back and forth between. My brothers and sister and I created a system where one of us ran to one corner of the square and jumped, forcing the one on the opposite corner to jump further, who would then land on the corner of the other square, forcing the person on the final opposite corner to go flying through the air.
8. Regardless of whether nor not that description made sense to you, let it be known that it is *amazing* how high and far we could go doing that.
9. That park also had a tire swing. How wonderful was the tire swing… here’s something you can spin and swing around on until you get dizzy and throw up. And kids just line up to do it. Fascinating.
10. Remember old school merry-go-rounds? Hard wood benches (full of splinters like its swing cousins) and hot metal bars.
11. And hello, the hot metal jungle gym with the beach sand bottom????
12. There is quite a theme here to my memories. Hot and metal. Sweat is a big memory as well, but I felt that my descriptions would cross over into “too much information” territory if I went into detail.
13. Final playground memory? The shaky bridge. Still popular in today’s parks, I marvel at my kids as they stand on the shaky bridge and giggle away. I know I used to do it to, but for the life of me, I have no idea why.
So why all the playground memories?
I was browsing around KaBoom!
This is a totally neat site where you can upload pictures of your local play areas. The idea is to share the parks and community spaces with the world so that locals and visitors alike can find appropriate play areas for their families, but the result was a mindful of memories.
Did you ever go to the playground growing up? What was your favorite memory of it? And better yet, if you saw your playground of childhood today, would you let your kid play on the structures?
I posted this photo of Pines Park on KaBOOM!
Kids these days… they have it so easy with their safe parks…
(More lists of Thirteen things here.)
(Hat tip to MomCentral for alerting me to the existence of KaBOOM!)
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that park sounds amazing!
Ah yes…sweat, heat and metal. And don’t forget how frickin’ high those slides used to be!
And YEAH, I would totally let my kids play on them. Heck, we’ve got worse, here in Africa. Splinters and rusty metal and all. Parks are rare; you take what you get.
Oh, I remember those metal slides. They had one in my childhood park too. It had a tunnel like coverint near the top. I just thought it was the coolest. Happy TT!
Ah, you brought back so many memories. We made up a game called “Hitch” to play on the swings and met every day all summer to play. Playgrounds today are so much more elaborate but we made up for that lack with imagination.
I don’t know about KaBoom, but YOU are certainly taking me back. I came in right as the wooden swings disappeared and the rubber ones came in. I hated them. They squish the legs together painfully.
I visited a playground last weekend with my nephews and tried to swing along on the monkey bars. I was very happy that my toes could reach the sand because I couldn’t make it past 2 bars before my arms fell off. I used to spend HOURS hanging upside down from them, swinging from them until my sweaty palms slipped or it was too hot to handle. Thanks for the memories!!!!
oh, this post brought back memories!
and your trampoline description made perfect sense. we didn’t have those, but we loved to ride the animals on giant springs… even after we got way too big for them and they would bend all the way to the ground!
I loved going to the park when I was a kid. I especially loved the swings and the monkey bars. It’s nice to remember those carefree days! Did you ever jump off the swings? I used to swing as high as I could and then jump off. It was the closest thing I could get to flying.
The park is truly a magical place. I try and take my kids as much as I can until they shed their alien shell and become pupas of the system.
I love Pines Park! We haven’t been in a long time but I used to love taking my kids there when they were younger. It always made me think, as do many places around here, that our kids have it soooooooooo good growing up in this beautiful place.
You’re right about the parks we had growing up. I’ve gotten so used to the new-fangled ones that I hadn’t stopped to think about what we’d had as kids!
I still love the shaky bridges…
i loved the park. we use to swing has high has possible and jump had to out do eash othe. also we had the wood see-saw with the metal handle to hang on to. then when you were coming down you tried to hit the ground has hard has possible to bounce the other person off. great fun