Slip Slidin’ Away
Sliding boards were fixtures in the
playgrounds of my youth. Schools and parks had sliding boards, see saws,
swings, “monkey bars,” and the “roundabouts’ or merry-go-rounds. These weren’t
the rubber covered, plastic playground items like the playgrounds of today.
These were monstrous, man-made objects with metal-pipe bones, rusty-chain
sinews, sawdust blood, and concrete pads for feet. There were no safety rails
for climbing up to the top of the eight foot tall or taller metal sliding boards.
The exposed metal was sun baked in the midday sun waiting to sear any bare
flesh that dared to come in contact with it.
If someone would jump off the
seesaw the other end would plummet hitting the ground so hard that teeth would
clatter shut. The “monkey-bar,” jungle gym rose from the playground like a skeleton
of a naked high-rise apartment building. Often the rungs were wet with dew or
rain allowing fingers to lose their grip and kids drop onto the hard earth
below or ricochet off another iron pipe. Fingers would often be pinched in the
rusty chains of the swing, tempting fate with the possibility of incurring the
disease of lock-jaw or tetanus. And I haven’t mentioned the merry-go-round yet.
There was nothing merry about that spinning disc of death. That spinning saucer
was a risk every time a kid climbed aboard when there was another “friend” there.
That friend would do their best to spin the thing as fast as possible hoping
that someone would fly off to their death or become dizzy and vomit. Aw yes,
the wonderful playgrounds of my childhood. They were definitely not OSHA
approved.
My first sliding board memory was
one on the playground in Sheridan, Illinois at the park of my Uncle Fred and
Aunt Cora Miner Hyatt’s town. That metal monster seemed to be at least ten feet
tall, but it did have metal handrails to assist the climber to the top. The
flat metal slide would clutch at bare legs and arms, giving brush-burns to an
unwary child.
There were other slides that I helped
lubricate with sheets of waxed paper. The waxed paper minimized the drag and
sped up the descent. The last slide I rode was the double humped metal camel at
Mammoth Park, Pennsylvania. That beast was about one hundred feet long with a man-made
bump near the middle. The steep descent would cause the rider to often lift
into the air as he or she hurtled down the metal chute. The rider would shoot
off the end of the slide into a muddy landing that could injure legs, arms, or
butts. This amusement wasn’t for the fainthearted but for youthful daredevils.
