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Monday, July 2, 2012

Back in the day: Child's play

When I was a kid growing up in the 50s, I loved school, but I wasn't immune to the joys of recess. I wasn't any much of a "girly-girl" back then, priding myself on being just as rough-and-tumble as any of the boys. The playground was a place to show how high I could swing or how far up on the monkey bars I dared to climb. Despite my ability to put many of the boys to shame, there would usually be one or two who had a crush on me, although it wasn't till I was about twelve years old that I began to welcome the attention. I remember getting in trouble in the second grade for tying a boy to the basketball goal with a jump rope and leaving him there when the bell rang to go back to class. When the teacher realized he was missing and the truth came out, I was completely without remorse. After all, he had tried to kiss me...blech!

Here are images of playground equipment that remind me of those rambunctious days when life was completely carefree and decades stretched out before me.

flickr.com - carlfbagge
laurieacouture.com
flickr.com - scottamus
oldfashionedpretty.com
onceuponawin.com
twirlyneedlefish.com

7 comments:

  1. I used to love the monkey bars!! Thanks for sharing these pictures- lots of good memories.

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    1. I loved them too, and climbing on them in a dress was a real challenge. Younger people find it hard to believe that some of us grew up in a time when girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. That finally changed a few years after I finished high school.

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  3. Ooops! I'm not sure how I clicked the wrong button...but I accidentally deleted the comment by Rachael, The Thrifty Picker. Sorry, Rachael!

    She said her Granny had a slide like the one above...and that you could really burn your butt going down it on a sunny day. LOL I remember those days too.

    The City of Dallas built a play area for kids in the Main Street Garden area...only to find out the equipment got too hot to play on during the summer...so dangerously hot that they had to post warning signs and go back to the drawing board. Stainless steel equipment in the 100+ degree summer gets hot? Takes a real rocket scientist to figure that one out, huh?

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  4. My favorite was the merry-go-round. They are alot harder to come by nowadays it makes me sad.

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    1. I loved the merry-go-round too...but there were always those weak-stomached kids that would get sick when they rode it...ewww.

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  5. Thanks for this post- it reminds me I need to do a post of photos I took last year, right before they tore down our town's old playground (very similar to those photos above) and replaced it with a new play "structure". Blech- it's so boring now and has none of the old time fun (and my kids think so too.)

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