Here in Greensboro they are building a new playground. Project Playground has been an ongoing effort to replace the old equipment with new and expand it somewhat. I have seen the plans and they are impressive. I do think it is a wonderful thing for the kids. I am concerned about the amount of use it will actually see. I hope it gets well used, but I have doubts. The cost of this project is quite significant. I wonder, even here in Greensboro, how many parents will allow their children to go to the playground without adult supervision ? You do have to be concerned with that in this day and age more so than in the past. That and how many children want to play on the playground anymore ? The little ones do, but the tweeners I'm not so sure about. I hope for the best.
Looking at those plans reminded me of the playgrounds I had as a kid. Up at Herrick park, across the street from the high school, their was a jungle gym and swings. The jungle gym was all steel. Galvanized pipe bent in big arcs and bolted together. The ground underneath packed hard as concrete. The swings were to the left of the jungle gym if memory serves. They hung by those long chains. The chains were not covered as they are nowadays. If you swung high enough and created slack in those chains your fingers could get pinched in those links. You learned not to do that rather quickly. There may have been a chin up bar there as well. I can't say as I remember exactly.
Over at the elementary school the playground was quite different. There was an obstacle course to run. I do recall a galvanized steel culvert pipe that you had to crawl through. We would crawl in there during recess and hide. Didn't seem to bother us at all that we got all dirty. There was a ball field there and we played kick ball on that. We even had a pole vault pit and bar. I never could master that.
When I was young we went to the playground. We played baseball, flipped baseball cards, shot marbles or played other games. All the kids went there. Of course that was long before video games, pinball games and all that. We only had two channels on television. After Saturday morning cartoons it was time to leave. Hang around home too long and you wind up working ! Out of sight, out of mind.
I do remember the slide, made out of galvanized steel ( the most popular choice for playground equipment ) getting really hot in the sun. Had to be careful of that. Sometimes the slide just wasn't slippery enough, if you could get some wax paper to rub on it, that helped. Yes the playground was the " mall " of my day. Didn't have stores of course but the good humor man might come by. His ice cream was expensive though, a dollar at least. If you stayed around the playground long enough you were bound to run into friends and classmates. The big kids might be smoking cigarettes in some hiding spot or up to some other mischief. Might be carving their initials in the benches or a tree trunk.
The new playground equipment is all made out of plastic. Brightly colored and all rounded edges. You can get quite a static shock from that stuff, at least the old ones did. Maybe this new equipment won't have that issue. The ground will be covered with some kind of soft material. The elementary school here has a sponge like surface under their equipment. It is a definite improvement over what we had. It is similar to the feel of a wrestling mat.
Now that spring has arrived I'm certain work will resume on the playground. Should be quite an event on opening day. I'm looking forward to seeing it. My grandchildren are already getting a little old for the playground. Morgan is eleven and Mark thirteen. Those ages are different than when I was eleven and thirteen. Maybe with the new equipment the playground will be revitalized and become a social hub once again. I think that would be a good thing, don't you ?
Looking at those plans reminded me of the playgrounds I had as a kid. Up at Herrick park, across the street from the high school, their was a jungle gym and swings. The jungle gym was all steel. Galvanized pipe bent in big arcs and bolted together. The ground underneath packed hard as concrete. The swings were to the left of the jungle gym if memory serves. They hung by those long chains. The chains were not covered as they are nowadays. If you swung high enough and created slack in those chains your fingers could get pinched in those links. You learned not to do that rather quickly. There may have been a chin up bar there as well. I can't say as I remember exactly.
Over at the elementary school the playground was quite different. There was an obstacle course to run. I do recall a galvanized steel culvert pipe that you had to crawl through. We would crawl in there during recess and hide. Didn't seem to bother us at all that we got all dirty. There was a ball field there and we played kick ball on that. We even had a pole vault pit and bar. I never could master that.
When I was young we went to the playground. We played baseball, flipped baseball cards, shot marbles or played other games. All the kids went there. Of course that was long before video games, pinball games and all that. We only had two channels on television. After Saturday morning cartoons it was time to leave. Hang around home too long and you wind up working ! Out of sight, out of mind.
I do remember the slide, made out of galvanized steel ( the most popular choice for playground equipment ) getting really hot in the sun. Had to be careful of that. Sometimes the slide just wasn't slippery enough, if you could get some wax paper to rub on it, that helped. Yes the playground was the " mall " of my day. Didn't have stores of course but the good humor man might come by. His ice cream was expensive though, a dollar at least. If you stayed around the playground long enough you were bound to run into friends and classmates. The big kids might be smoking cigarettes in some hiding spot or up to some other mischief. Might be carving their initials in the benches or a tree trunk.
The new playground equipment is all made out of plastic. Brightly colored and all rounded edges. You can get quite a static shock from that stuff, at least the old ones did. Maybe this new equipment won't have that issue. The ground will be covered with some kind of soft material. The elementary school here has a sponge like surface under their equipment. It is a definite improvement over what we had. It is similar to the feel of a wrestling mat.
Now that spring has arrived I'm certain work will resume on the playground. Should be quite an event on opening day. I'm looking forward to seeing it. My grandchildren are already getting a little old for the playground. Morgan is eleven and Mark thirteen. Those ages are different than when I was eleven and thirteen. Maybe with the new equipment the playground will be revitalized and become a social hub once again. I think that would be a good thing, don't you ?
No comments:
Post a Comment