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Saturday, May 12, 2012

Playground Graveyard...take me there

No, this isn't a tease for the new Stephen King novel, but now that I think of it...maybe he and I can collaborate on his next book. I'll write the title, and he can do all that wordy, grammary, cliff hanger-y,surprise ender-y stuff. We can split the profits 50-50.

I will let you know how that strategy works out for me. I know one way to spend my advance from the publisher on SK's ( I can call him "SK." We're partners.) next collaboration with me -"Playground Graveyard - Deathslide"

I digress. Here is how I plan to spend my money.
1950s playground equipment
Click for a larger image.
Now, I am not exactly sure if this is a piece of playground equipment, or these kids didn't finish their vegetables at dinner. All I know is: Where was this when I was growing up!? I don't think any threat of "No TV!" would peel me away from this. I have seen some scary playground contraptions, but this is my favorite.

Instead of looking for Nazi war criminals in South America, how is it no one suspected they would sneak into the U.S. and begin to design playgrounds of terror to hurt and maim our country's most important natural resource? Fortunately, the Nazi's underestimated the resilience of American youth and instead, the Nazi were driven off American playgrounds by the squeals of laughter and eventually the lawsuits and liability insurance premiums.

Care to share some of your playground memories?

5 comments:

  1. Technically, it's still there, but it's changed so much that it's practically unrecognizable.

    See, here in Costa Mesa we have this park. The real name is The Lion's Club Park. However, people call it "The Airplane Park."

    The reason, somehow at some time someone donated an actual retired military airplane and it was put into the park as equipment.

    We kids had a grand old time climbing all over it. Even in the summer when the metal became blistering.

    Then one day some kid crawled into - whatever that exhaust-like area is called in the back - and got stuck. So first they blocked it off with a large piece of wood.

    Then it was cement.

    And eventually because the exposed metal became so hot they covered the entire thing in concrete.

    So instead of this cool metal plane, it's just this hunk of plane shaped cement. Oh sure, the plane is still under there somewhere, but it's not the same....

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  2. Yes I know what this flying thing is called and know all about it. Email me at: reba1022@gmail.com

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  3. We had one of these in our community park while growing up. It was both thrilling and dangerous -- lots of broken bones back in the day...

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  4. We had that at my school we called it a may pole and some cool stuff like a metal ferris wheel that had two seats and i giant wheel on the side gour friend could get it going so you could go round and round .I wish this stuff was still around

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  5. When I attended Hyampom Elementary School we had one of these. Our handles were rings but every one would wind up their chain, then run around until everyone was airborne and unwinding....rotating and revolving. I don't know what it was marketed as, but the only name we knew it by was the "kid-killer". It was removed about 1990 and exchanged for a less reckless piece of playground equipment.

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