Rocket Slides and Monkey Bars: Chasing the Vanishing Playgrounds of Our Youth

As a military baby boomer kid during my early years we lived in the family military housing projects.

There were a lot of other kids to play with at all times.

We had some of the best massive Hide-and-go-seek games along with Red-Rover-Red-Rover send (name) over games.

But the ultimate fun was out on the project play grounds.

 Pyramid jungle bars that went over 50 feet up.

We would climb up to the top and survey the neighborhood from our lofty perch.

No one ever fell off or even thought about such things.

We would expend a lot of energy climbing and playing on all sorts of great things in the playgrounds.

Then slowly over the years things changed for kids playgrounds.

The best and the most fun things were eliminated.

The circular whirl wheel was one ride that the older kids dominated.

We younger kids would get on and hold on to the bars and the older kids would spin the thing until we could barely maintain our grip on the bars.

Some of us would fly off and get flung out a few feet, tumbling and rolling on the ground.

With scrapped elbows and knees we would laugh and get back on for the next session of spins.

There was a high pole with chains hanging down from the top.

At the end of the chains were handles that we hung on to and then all of us would run around in a circle, jumping outward once we got up momentum.

We called it the "May Pole."

We would spin round and round, mostly propelled by the strength of the older kids on the ride.

The faster we spun the further out and higher up we would go.

Every now and then we would lose our grip and fly outward and tumbled on to the sand below.

It was the greatest fun!

Our slides were way up in the sky.

Climbing up to the top took some effort they were so high.

You cold see all of the neighborhood from up at the top.

But because of all the other kids waiting on the ladder you were not allowed to linger at the top.

You would sit down and slide down over a series of humps in the slide on your way back to the bottom.

Of course some of the older boys had figured out that burlap bags and wax paper were accessories for increased enjoyment on the slides.

Then when we were starting to raise our own families, during the 70's, playgrounds had evolved into safer less exciting things.

Although there were the self contained climb through playground structures that were some fun.

Most of them had a "rocket ship" theme to them.

Eventually even those grew smaller and "safer."

Oh the swings were swings during my youth!

Very tall structures with ropes and wooden seats.

We would get on them and the older kids would push us.

We would swing way out there and up until we felt we were going to fall out backwards before

coming back the other way and feeling like were were going to fall out forwards.

Some of the older boys would jump out when the swing hit the highest point in the arc of the swing.

They would fly way out, tumbling into the sand below, laughing loudly with great joy as if they could fly.

The swing structure usually had four swings going all at once with these wonderful activities.

Invariably one of the boys would shimmy up one of the four support poles to the top support bar and hang out up there for awhile.

Once again, no one ever fell.

I even hung from my legs at the very top of the high monkey bars myself a time or two, surveying the playground from my upside down perspective while the blood rushed to my head.

Man we grew up in the best of times.

Too bad for today's kids in their sanitized play grounds...

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