Slip Slidin' Away

 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.