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No More Playgrounds
Nov. 18th, 2008 03:51 pmAmong other reasons, I love Google Street View and Satellite because they let me visit old neighborhoods where I used to live to see what's changed and what hasn't. Not long ago, I decided to see if my old elementary school was still there and running. It's in Cleveland Heights, OH. It is indeed still an operational school. Well, some of it is.
As a wee school child in the 1970s, dressed in my Cindy Brady-esque school outfits, the best part of school were the three playgrounds that surrounded the otherwise big and ugly school building. I'd play on them every day at recess, and then come back after school to play some more after going home for a snack.
Each playground was designed for a different age group. The one that held the most charm for me was for kindergarden through 2nd grade. It had a tall metal slide and canvas swings that went as high as you dared. There was a row of concrete cottages that were supposed to look like they were made of Swiss cheese. You could climb rungs to sit on the flat roof, or play inside. There were concrete tubes to crawl through and a see-saw. Like all three of the playgrounds, everything was on bare asphalt that got sticky when the sun was hot. I loved it.
Much as I favored that one, I was proud when I was old enough to play on the 3rd and 4th graders' playground. It had a jungle gym that looked like it was 25 feet high (it was probably about 12 feet). Kids dangled by their knees from the very top, above asphalt. The swings were bigger and the cool thing to do was to have someone twist and twist you on the swing until the chains were wound up like a spring, then lift your feet off the ground and spin at centrifuge speed. There was one of those merry-go-round things (as opposed to a carousel) that you spin on your own power. I can't remember ever spinning myself to the vomiting stage, but no doubt some did.
For the big 5th and 6th graders, there was the biggest jungle gym of all, and tetherball poles, and painted lines on the asphault for Four Square, and a baseball diamond. There is much I don't remember about the school building itself, but I can see every tiny detail of all three playgrounds in my memory.
Google let me go back and visit. I didn't expect the playgrounds to be completely the same, but I also didn't expect them to be completely gone and replaced with nothing. But there it was, entirely empty parcels of asphault with not so much as a bench on any of them. Not one piece of playground equipment was left, only the lonely brown baseball diamond.
Of course I can't know why they removed the playgrounds even though the building is still an elementary school (I double checked), but they weren't the only ones. I scrolled a mile down the street to the old city pool. The pool is still there, but not the playground with the world's most awesome curly slide and the sand jump and the kid-scaled climbing wall. Just gone, all of it.
Where do the children of my old town play? Do today's students of my long-ago school have to play only indoors? I can understand why the risky (but fun!) metal and asphalt playgrounds of my youth have disappeared, but I would have expected them to at least be replaced by the low-slung wood chip & rope ladder playgrounds of a generation later. Are those on their way out, too?
I'm not a parent, and I don't know what playing means for children of today. I sort of wish that I hadn't looked at the vanished playgrounds of my childhood. It's a little glum to think of someone growing up without ever knowing curly slides.
As a wee school child in the 1970s, dressed in my Cindy Brady-esque school outfits, the best part of school were the three playgrounds that surrounded the otherwise big and ugly school building. I'd play on them every day at recess, and then come back after school to play some more after going home for a snack.
Each playground was designed for a different age group. The one that held the most charm for me was for kindergarden through 2nd grade. It had a tall metal slide and canvas swings that went as high as you dared. There was a row of concrete cottages that were supposed to look like they were made of Swiss cheese. You could climb rungs to sit on the flat roof, or play inside. There were concrete tubes to crawl through and a see-saw. Like all three of the playgrounds, everything was on bare asphalt that got sticky when the sun was hot. I loved it.
Much as I favored that one, I was proud when I was old enough to play on the 3rd and 4th graders' playground. It had a jungle gym that looked like it was 25 feet high (it was probably about 12 feet). Kids dangled by their knees from the very top, above asphalt. The swings were bigger and the cool thing to do was to have someone twist and twist you on the swing until the chains were wound up like a spring, then lift your feet off the ground and spin at centrifuge speed. There was one of those merry-go-round things (as opposed to a carousel) that you spin on your own power. I can't remember ever spinning myself to the vomiting stage, but no doubt some did.
For the big 5th and 6th graders, there was the biggest jungle gym of all, and tetherball poles, and painted lines on the asphault for Four Square, and a baseball diamond. There is much I don't remember about the school building itself, but I can see every tiny detail of all three playgrounds in my memory.
Google let me go back and visit. I didn't expect the playgrounds to be completely the same, but I also didn't expect them to be completely gone and replaced with nothing. But there it was, entirely empty parcels of asphault with not so much as a bench on any of them. Not one piece of playground equipment was left, only the lonely brown baseball diamond.
Of course I can't know why they removed the playgrounds even though the building is still an elementary school (I double checked), but they weren't the only ones. I scrolled a mile down the street to the old city pool. The pool is still there, but not the playground with the world's most awesome curly slide and the sand jump and the kid-scaled climbing wall. Just gone, all of it.
Where do the children of my old town play? Do today's students of my long-ago school have to play only indoors? I can understand why the risky (but fun!) metal and asphalt playgrounds of my youth have disappeared, but I would have expected them to at least be replaced by the low-slung wood chip & rope ladder playgrounds of a generation later. Are those on their way out, too?
I'm not a parent, and I don't know what playing means for children of today. I sort of wish that I hadn't looked at the vanished playgrounds of my childhood. It's a little glum to think of someone growing up without ever knowing curly slides.