Okay, so I mentioned previously that some individuals have been shocked that I don’t remember certain events from my childhood. That’s fair I suppose, but I’m going to go with a belief that I’ve developed over a long time that I probably DO remember everything, it’s the recall mechanism that’s broken down. I have no idea if that is real science or not, but it seems plausible to me. Have you ever tried to remember something like a person’s name or quote from a movie you saw a long time ago, only to draw a blank, but remember it a few hours or days later? There you go.
So the event I got flak for was kite flying. I honestly have no recollection of flying a kite with my parents when I was a kid. That said, I’m pretty certain we would have done something like that, absolutely! In fact I have many very clear memories of visits to our neighborhood parks. So I’m going to run through a few of those and see what my internal recall mechanism comes up with. We had “kid friendly” names for them, maybe that helped etch them into my memory.
The Submarine Park
Seems like we had a lot of cool parks for kids growing up in a suburb of Cleveland. One of my favorites was the “submarine” park. It was this lower area in the middle of several neighborhoods with lots of trees for canopy, an odd stone building with barbeque grills, various “normal” playground equipment and in the center of the area, a huge (to me, anyway) skeleton of a “submarine”. It was formed from pipes, so no walls, but you could climb all over it. There were attached wheels you could spin to pretend you were steering or adjusting ballast or whatever one does on real submarines. And you could climb up a ladder into a small space that resembled a conning tower…and now that I think about it, it had some kind of representation of a periscope…I don’t remember it being functional, but it definitely looked like that. We would also climb up on the “deck” which was just a modified monkey bars and have a grand time.
Around the “sub” were all manner of old school playground gear that I’m not sure we see any more in parks…seesaws….really big wooden ones that went really high, and if you happened to run under one when it was on the down turn, you’d be in a world of hurt. I think that happened more than once. Swings, of course. And those spinning mini “merry go round” platforms. Those were awesome, especially if you got 2 or 3 kids, stronger ones (not me) to run around and get it going really fast, then jump on. That was good for a few solid seconds of G forces, and then the resulting dizzy-almost-want-to-throw-up feeling which was somehow considered “fun” in the kid brain. And now I remember those “animals on giant springs” that if you went just a bit too fast, you could launch yourself off as good as a mechanical bronco. Personally that was way beyond my “personal playground risk level” but I saw it done on several occasions.
The Steam Roller Park
This was probably one of my favorites, if not the most memorable. Short walk from home, not many trees as I remember, we had a few soccer practices there. Some monkey bars and hanging bars, and a few swings. But the best part of this park, yeah, see the name…it had a huge (in kid mind, remember) steam roller! Yes, it was a real steam roller from who knows, maybe the 1950’s, that had been decommissioned and painted over and fixed in place. A huge iron beast that we loved to climb on…and I think avoided death and other injuries probably every time, with the height of it and all the bolts, wheel well edges, fixed-in-place control levers, etc. One slip and it could easily have been a trip to the emergency room.
The Soccer Park
I played a lot of soccer when I was a kid. It was very popular back then and a great alternative to those of us who thought baseball was a bit too slow and football was a bit too violent. I would quickly discover that soccer could be pretty rough and tumble, too, especially as kids got older and more competitive. A lot of the parents got really competitive, too, but that’s another story. Anyway, I was a mediocre soccer player at best, but I remember having a good time playing, usually in the positions that required less “longer distance” running and more of the “sprint and use a little muscle to obtain or pass the ball.” I was not a skinny kid, definitely the short and stocky type. Anyway, I spent a lot of time at one very large park in our city. It had many different fields and I have great memories of those games and teams. And a fair share of disappointing games and performances, too. Did I mentioned that I sucked as a soccer player?
The Lake Park
Ahhh, this is a great one. We didn’t go to this park as often, which seemed to make it more special. It was right on the “great lake” known as Erie. Lots of trees with the typical playground equipment strewn about. In fact, this park had one of those really tall, metal slides that seemed to accelerate exponentially any kid who dared climb up to the top and had enough mass (like me) to make it that much more exciting. You know what I’m talking about, the slide that looked like someone had purposefully waxed it up to make the frictional coefficient almost zero? (There’s a Clark Griswald reference here if you are so inclined.) I can’t believe we survived that slide. And there was even a sandbox I think, but being on the lake there was also what passed for a beach at the edge.
And that was the best part about this park. Along this quasi-beach area was an endless supply of small to medium sized stones. And I’m not talking about jagged-edge rocks, these were smooth, cool stones….of the skipping variety. Now you see where I’m going with this. I learned to skip stones at this park and wow, I think I could have skipped stones for hours…come to think of it, maybe that’s why my parents didn’t take us to the lake park all that often…perhaps they were more clever than I’ve given them credit for. Of course, I now have a “parental view” of the world which I lacked earlier in life.
Anyway, skipping stones was grand fun. My dad taught me how to hold the stones just right for maximum skip count. I don’t remember what our record was, but with just the right size, weight and aerodynamic properties, we could get them to go really, really far.
So there you have it. No kites, but great park memories. But there seems to have been a lot of what would now be considered “dangerous” playground equipment. Yet somehow I survived. Go figure. I think I will have to hop over to Google Maps satellite views and see what’s become of those childhood parks.