Because of what the world has become today, parents tend to be very protective of their kids. They would shudder if they ever visited the playgrounds of my youth.
Our playground was a minefield of dangerous activities. Everything was made of steel that heated up in the mid-day sun; wood filled with skin-piercing splinters, and unforgiving concrete floors that did not treat kiddy knees and skulls kindly. The typical things to play on in every Brooklyn playground included swings, slides (called sliding ponds), see-saws and of course every parent's favorite, the deadly monkey bars. There was also a wading pool, basically a concrete enclosure surrounded by steel bars that was flooded by a series of sprinkler heads.
The swings were of two types, "kiddy" and what we called "the big swings". Except for being made of stainless steel, which on a hot day could nicely broil a small child in about five minutes, the kiddy swings were relatively safe. The big swings were another matter. Typically, one did not sit on them as intended, but rather stood up and pumped one's little legs to propel the swing higher and higher. There was no limit to how high the swings could go, and in the process of trying to impress one's friends, kids were known to fly well above the horizontal bar from which the swings were suspended.
The slide or "sliding pond" was so-named by immigrants who remembered sliding on the winter ice in their native countries. It was a big source of emergency room visits. Besides being able to make pancakes on its surface on a hot day, the slide featured other hazards. If the slide got sticky, say from someone spilling a soda on it, the kid would slide a few feet, stick on the tacky surface, and tumble down the rest of the way, or worse, off the edge of the slide onto the friendly concrete floor.
The see-saw seems harmless enough. One child sits on either end and laughingly enjoys going up and down. Not in our playground. One fun prank was to quickly push down on your end just as the other kid was straddling his end to get on. This contributed to the steady flow of boys entering the priesthood in my neighborhood. Another gag was to first lower your end all the way, which naturally elevated the other kid as high as he could go. And then the fun part of suddenly jumping off your side and watching the kid on the other end come crashing down onto, you guessed it, the concrete floor. I think the term "pain in the ass" originated from this practice.
And finally, the king of kiddie playground injuries, the monkey bars. The designer of this apparatus must have been horribly teased as a boy, and his vengeance was well wrought upon the sons of his tormentors. A pyramid-like structure about fifteen feet high, it was built of steel pipes made to be climbed or swung from. Again, if used carefully, the monkey bars were safe enough. A rite of passage in our group, however, was to climb to the uppermost bars and stand on the top bars without holding on to anything. There are definitely kids walking around today who can't do long-division because of their attempts to accomplish this feat.
As for the wading pool, other than falling on the concrete floor, this was a relatively low risk activity. Of course if the park attendant (or "parkie" as we called him) didn't thoroughly sweep out the broken beer bottles from the night before, there could be stitches in your future, but on a hot day, we were prepared to take our chances. Kids in their bathing suits enjoyed sitting on the gushing sprinkler heads. If you haven't done this, it's hard to appreciate the feeling.
As luck would have it, most of us would see Disney-world, $10,000 family vacations, that were way off in the future. But, as I recall, Growing up on the on the streets of Brooklyn all we had were wood and steel and concrete, and we sure as hell made the most of them.
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