Jump to content

Menu

Playground Equipment of Yore...


Recommended Posts

While looking for a photo of the super-dangerous but OH-SO-FUN playground equipment I remember as a child, I came upon this blog post.

http://tstbob.blogspot.com/2009/12/walk-down-memory-lane-to-dangerous.html

 

I daily risked life and limb on the Witch's Hat, the Octopus, the Hamster Wheel, and the Swinging Gate at my elementary school. And lived to tell about it.

 

Nasty dislocated shoulder from flying off the Witch's Hat, though.....

 

astrid

:lol: That was great!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There was a park that my grandparents used to take us to that was so much fun. It had a rocket but it was way taller than the one pictured. I'm thinking it was 8-10 levels high. I don't remember a slide. There were these horse glider swings that had metal poles holding them up. You would always bang your head. There was an old airplane that had a ladder on back side, you crawled through the hull, and there was a slide that came out the front. You could also climb into the cockpit. There was an old army tank that you could play inside. I need to find out where that park is and see if that stuff still exists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That was wonderful!

 

I went to Salzburg, Austria this past winter and plan on taking my kids this summer. Why? Not the Sound of Music, or the Mozart house or any sort of culture. I want to take them to the playground. (scroll down to pic 11) They have all the "dangerous" equipment that would be so much fun to play on - well, when it's not -2C degrees outside! :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had all of those, although not on the same playground, including one more-a WWII fighter jet with most of the innards ripped out so you could climb into it, with a slide o'doom attached. So you could climb up, sit in the cockpit, pretend to shoot down a few Axis fighters with the (hopefully non-functional anymore) REAL machine guns, then slide down, or climb up into what was formerly the exhaust vent into this nice little compartment.

 

That park also had metal-caged glider swings that you had bars to pull on to increase the thrust when you pumped. LOVED those things-and got a lot of bruises because I pulled back too far and banged myself against the cage.

 

One of my big memories of the Hamster wheel was that, once you got tall enough, you could brace yourself in the middle of it and let other kids spin you upside down, over and over, until you got sick or gave up-whichever came first.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Along with the Witch's Hat, this was another favorite in my northern New Hampshire paper mill town: The Log Roller. So you stood on it with another kid, held on to the horizontal bar and ran as fast as you could. If the other kid was faster than you, just like in REAL log-rolling, you fell off. Except you had a death-grip on the bar, so your legs went flying out behind you and the rolling log spun against your shins, inserting a bazillion needle-sharp slivers into your flesh from ankle to knee. And still we loved it... one of the most popular items on the playground. Good times. :D

 

astrid

 

I remember one of those from a playground somewhere when I was a child, but I was too short to reach the bar. (I was always one of the shortest kids in my school. In 2nd grade I couldn't reach the bar to open the school door, and often a kindergartener would open it for me.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...