Playground equipment-Readers share playground survival stories
Playground equipment-Readers share playground survival stories
The Milwaukee City Council passed a measure recently that will ensure all new elementary schools in the city provide a minimum amount of safe, open play space to help children stay healthy and active.
The goal is to combat childhood obesity of course.
The surface area underneath the playground equipment must be soft. Concrete and asphalt surfaces under climbing equipment and slides will now be prohibited.
It’s the same around Fond du Lac — remnants of the old metal swings and slides, the rocking horses and merry-go-rounds, still exist here and there but most have been replaced with safe, well-padded playlands.
When I read the latest Milwaukee move I flashed back to 1969. The boys on the playground were engaged in a game of “rumble,” sort of a mix of rugby and fumble, another favorite, male-dominated recess game at the time. John Beckers ended up on the bottom of the pile of fifth-graders, with a broken leg. Mr. Germanson carried John inside in a scene that would today anguish school district attorneys and health care professionals.
That put a stop to the game rumble at Linfield Elementary School for all eternity.
The year before, Jane Gore fell off the monkey bars and had a concussion, causing her to see “weiner dogs everywhere” as she tells it.
Not that we want to go back to those days, but readers from the baby-boom generation can well recall when kids played hard on precarious playground toys that crossed over the edge of danger. Games like murder ball and king of the hill were common place and someone was always falling off the giant, two story slide or getting fingers caught in the merry-go-round.
Somehow, most of us survived and we carried the battle scars with a bit of pride. If we happened to come home with an injury our parents yelled at us: “We told you to be careful, that’s what you get.”
“Back in 1959 I fell off the top of the steel monkey bars (jungle gym) and landed on my head,” said Steve Hinkley of Fond du Lac. “That might help explain a few things.”
After the jungle gym incident, Hinkley said he hung out on the horizontal ladder bars. His grade school was a test site for a playground equipment company.
“The designer would come around to take pictures for the catalog and ask what we liked or didn't like. I remember telling the guy to put foot platforms and handles on both sides of the ‘swinging gate’ so you could also go clockwise. They installed the prototype at McKinley grade school around 1958-59,” he said.
Many city residents remember a similar “swinging gate” that once thrilled many a child at Lakeside Park. The original design had a 1-foot platform and handle which forced the rider to go counter clockwise.
“I'd get 2 to 3 girls to stand on the backside. Then I'd get that baby going round and round so fast they would fly off. They would laugh, dust themselves off and get right back on,” Hinkley said.
Michelle Morris wrote: "I always remember that swinging gate at Lakeside Park and the big climber thing that looked like a caterpiller if I remember right."
Originally from North Fond du Lac, Barbara Livieri now lives in Florida but she fondly recalls referring to the monkey bars as “blister bars.”
“They certainly lived up to their name. And the slides made out of steel were so hot in the summer it burnt your backside, if you were able to slide down it at all. When in doubt, we grabbed some sand from the sandbox and made it slippery-er,” she said.
AnnMarie Klewicki of Fond du Lac had a fondness for the merry-go-round (sometimes referred to as the big spinner). One kid would always take on the challenge of trying to climb to the center as it spun around.
“We would spin so fast that we could not hold on. Also I liked the metal swings that you sat on facing a partner and the metal ones you pumped the bars with your arms to go. They were arm breakers though,” she said.
Traci Dunaway of Milwaukee attended Consolidated Parochial Elementary School in Mount Calvary.
‘We had the bell, the blister maker and a horizontal pole that we would straddle and twirl sideways all the way around, over black top. We loved those toys. It may have been practice for the circus but it was fun,” she said.
Betty Benzie of Fond du Lac was a summer playground supervisor in Fond du Lac for 30 years, beginning in the 1950s. She said at first there was no equipment, just vacant lots where games like kick-the-can and Indian ball were played on warm summer days.
“When we did have swings and slides, sure kids fell off, maybe scraped their knees. But in all my years we never had a major mishap. We never had to call an ambulance,” she said.
The Milwaukee City Council passed a measure recently that will ensure all new elementary schools in the city provide a minimum amount of safe, open play space to help children stay healthy and active.
The goal is to combat childhood obesity of course.
The surface area underneath the playground equipment must be soft. Concrete and asphalt surfaces under climbing equipment and slides will now be prohibited.
It’s the same around Fond du Lac — remnants of the old metal swings and slides, the rocking horses and merry-go-rounds, still exist here and there but most have been replaced with safe, well-padded playlands.
When I read the latest Milwaukee move I flashed back to 1969. The boys on the playground were engaged in a game of “rumble,” sort of a mix of rugby and fumble, another favorite, male-dominated recess game at the time. John Beckers ended up on the bottom of the pile of fifth-graders, with a broken leg. Mr. Germanson carried John inside in a scene that would today anguish school district attorneys and health care professionals.
That put a stop to the game rumble at Linfield Elementary School for all eternity.
The year before, Jane Gore fell off the monkey bars and had a concussion, causing her to see “weiner dogs everywhere” as she tells it.
Not that we want to go back to those days, but readers from the baby-boom generation can well recall when kids played hard on precarious playground toys that crossed over the edge of danger. Games like murder ball and king of the hill were common place and someone was always falling off the giant, two story slide or getting fingers caught in the merry-go-round.
Somehow, most of us survived and we carried the battle scars with a bit of pride. If we happened to come home with an injury our parents yelled at us: “We told you to be careful, that’s what you get.”
“Back in 1959 I fell off the top of the steel monkey bars (jungle gym) and landed on my head,” said Steve Hinkley of Fond du Lac. “That might help explain a few things.”
After the jungle gym incident, Hinkley said he hung out on the horizontal ladder bars. His grade school was a test site for a playground equipment company.
“The designer would come around to take pictures for the catalog and ask what we liked or didn't like. I remember telling the guy to put foot platforms and handles on both sides of the ‘swinging gate’ so you could also go clockwise. They installed the prototype at McKinley grade school around 1958-59,” he said.
Many city residents remember a similar “swinging gate” that once thrilled many a child at Lakeside Park. The original design had a 1-foot platform and handle which forced the rider to go counter clockwise.
“I'd get 2 to 3 girls to stand on the backside. Then I'd get that baby going round and round so fast they would fly off. They would laugh, dust themselves off and get right back on,” Hinkley said.
Michelle Morris wrote: "I always remember that swinging gate at Lakeside Park and the big climber thing that looked like a caterpiller if I remember right."
Originally from North Fond du Lac, Barbara Livieri now lives in Florida but she fondly recalls referring to the monkey bars as “blister bars.”
“They certainly lived up to their name. And the slides made out of steel were so hot in the summer it burnt your backside, if you were able to slide down it at all. When in doubt, we grabbed some sand from the sandbox and made it slippery-er,” she said.
AnnMarie Klewicki of Fond du Lac had a fondness for the merry-go-round (sometimes referred to as the big spinner). One kid would always take on the challenge of trying to climb to the center as it spun around.
“We would spin so fast that we could not hold on. Also I liked the metal swings that you sat on facing a partner and the metal ones you pumped the bars with your arms to go. They were arm breakers though,” she said.
Traci Dunaway of Milwaukee attended Consolidated Parochial Elementary School in Mount Calvary.
‘We had the bell, the blister maker and a horizontal pole that we would straddle and twirl sideways all the way around, over black top. We loved those toys. It may have been practice for the circus but it was fun,” she said.
Betty Benzie of Fond du Lac was a summer playground supervisor in Fond du Lac for 30 years, beginning in the 1950s. She said at first there was no equipment, just vacant lots where games like kick-the-can and Indian ball were played on warm summer days.
“When we did have swings and slides, sure kids fell off, maybe scraped their knees. But in all my years we never had a major mishap. We never had to call an ambulance,” she said.
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