Playgrounds and children go together like peanut butter and jelly. Littered with many crazy contraptions to entertain children for hours on end and also tire them out at the same time. I remember most playgrounds I grew up on, and to distinguish them, we gave them our own personal names. There was a big one on Elm Ave in Hanover that we called the Spaceship Park. There was a lot of static equipment, but the most attractive was a metal structure that started as a square ladder that led into an oval dome that looked like a spaceship. This was both a fun beginning and end of visit attraction. The best time to go was in the early evening as the sun was setting. I would lie in the oval and watch as the sun set on the basketball courts down below, imaging I was about to take off to the stars. The "spacecraft" did have a major flaw and probably wouldn't fly today. I mentioned the entire thing was metal. Metal absorbs heat very well. Hot metal and a child's skin do not mix. It's why I haven't seen anything like it since.
The other park in Hanover we frequented was dubbed the Giraffe Park. In the dead center was a giant metal giraffe that you could climb up it's back and to its head. This was the sole highlight for coming to this park. Everything else was...meh. This is another forgone piece of playground equipment because it had no side barriers and the drop was a good 20ft off the ground, I imagine enough kids fell off it to make it be deemed unsafe. It actually was removed before we moved out of state. However, there was one legendary moment that happened here. It was a warm summer Saturday night. The mysterious metal cabinet that was always locked was finally open, revealing a lot of sporting equipment. It wasn't long before 16 or so kids (myself included) grabbed a bunch of hockey sticks, a street hockey ball, and promptly formed a game on the shuffleboard court. I had not met a single one of these kids before in my life, but being kids, we were all just happy to play with each other. That game was memorable. There were some kids who were definitely bigger and better than I was and it was intimidating. At one point I saw an opening and took my shot. It sailed right under two sticks of good players and off the back for a goal. Then later in the game, one of the better kids on my side told me that if a bigger kid charged me with the ball, to simply charge him back and take it. I wasn't willing to do that, but when the moment came, my teammate nodded and I charged the big kid charging me. To my amazement I swiped the ball and sent it to a teammate further down. I don't remember the exact outcome of that game, but my love for street hockey was born that night. The last thing that made that night memorable was a very smart ice cream truck driver drove his musical truck right by the park. Instantly he had 30-50 customers. My parents obliged and allowed us to get ice cream. It was an incredible night.
Abbottstown park was a bigger park in terms of land that was down the street from our house, but not playing equipment. However, due to its proximity to us and its baseball fields, we frequented it quite often. There was a small wooden playhouse that you climbed wooden stairs to get into. It had a rickety bridge connected to a platform which had a slide built off it. Sometimes we would bring hot wheels cars to this park and race them down the slide. One time after doing this, we decided to go down to the baseball fields and Tim left his shoebox with a handful of cars in it at the slide. When we returned later, they were gone. After that we never brought more than a few cars each. The house was fun when it was new but eventually it became quite rundown and wasp infested. Whenever we had bigger group outings, we'd usually end up here. And every summer, the large field on the back end of the park would host a carnival. Rides, games, cotton candy, the works. I did one of my first House of Mirrors here. It was nerve-wracking for my young self, especially when I walked head first into a mirror. One of the popular rides here was spinning crowns. They were large crown cars that could hold 4 people and they spun like mixer. If you had dizzy problems or a weak stomach, this ride was definitely not for you. Each year though, Zach would have a competition with some of his other friends to see who could ride it the most times in a row without puking. I never did see the end results, but at one point, he didn't look too good. Small town carnivals were always a blast.
I did have a favorite park. If it was up to me which one we'd go to, it was this one every time. It had its own name. Kid's Kingdom. Imagine pulling into the parking lot with your parents. There, just a hop, skip, and a jump away, stood a large wooden castle. To my child eyes, it was huge. There were different levels, multiple floors, ladders that went down hatches, rooms with spyglasses, and even built in receivers where you could communicate with your friend on the other side of the castle. This was the kind of place where my imagination went wild.
Sometimes I would see myself as a valiant knight defending the castle's honor. Other times I would believe I was a vicious raider coming to loot the castle's treasure. And on occasion, I would be an explorer, searching for long forgotten riches and treasures. But never once in these great escapades was I alone. We always went on group outings here so the usual suspects included Melinda, Joanna, Elise, Maggie, Katherine, and sometimes Joe. We would craft new realities to our heart's content. Sure the occasional disagreement would arise, but we were noble kings and queens who could reconcile our differences in a civil manner. This castle truly made me feel like a king.
There isn't a happy ending to this story, however. Playgrounds like this used to be quite prevalent. But as the times changed, they took with them these iconic grounds. Being made of all wood, splinters could be a common issue. The cost to upkeep these types of structures in season changing climates became uneconomical. But the biggest reason for their demise is simply that parents could not see their children half the time. In the 90s, parents didn't have to worry as much as they do now about child predators. It was perfectly fine for 7 year old me to disappear into the castle for chunks of time without my parents being overly worried if anything happened to me. But now, those castles with all their blind spots create havoc on anxious parents. Some may still exist, but all the ones I knew and loved are long gone. Left to be nothing more than amazing childhood memories that gave purpose to my life.
One last thing I want to mention is that parks with playgrounds were a great place for making temporary friends. You showed up, other kids were there, you wanted to play a game, and you were set for the rest of the night. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you'd never see those kids again, but that mattered not as they had served their purpose. To simply be someone to play with for a short period of time. And that's quite alright.
No comments:
Post a Comment