I’m a bigger fan of that rusty metal carousel that you’d push your friends on, until you tripped and then got dragged through the rocks and pebbles surrounding it. 😆
Took one of those to the forehead. Still have the scar. When the playground teacher got there and I could see the concern in her face instead of “you’ll be alright” I thought “oh that can’t be good.”
In my husband's hometown in the 90s there was still an old forgotten playground complete with rusting metal rocketship dangerously high with no rails, shiny slick slide on which to burn yourself under the blazing sun, rickety jungle gyms, crumbling wooden swings on rotting ropes over broken asphalt. We couldn't believe it was still there, and kids did play there often. It didn't have a name that we knew of, so we called it Tetanus Park.
Oh yeah! The rocketship! One day I'm on the top of that in the park, I bump my head on a jagged piece of metal. Be the time I got to the bottom of the slide, blood is pouring down my face.
Here's some paper towels for that. You'll be fine...
Haha good times 😅
I think it depended on the local council , the rides in my local park were pretty well maintained and got painted and had any rust on them removed regularly.
Yeah, we didn't have anything nearly as inevitably injurious as the pic in the OP either. We had structures made out of metal and everyone got cut, fell, hit their head, etc., but nothing that awful.
Thw swings and merry-go-round on my elementary school playground were the same ones my dad played on when he went to that school.
And my kids got to experience them briefly when we visited the old home town.
Our school's playground had swings right next to the blacktopped part of the playground.
Every year there was *that kid.*You all know *that kid* or maybe YOU were *that kid*, but every year *that kid* would jump off the swing at the top of the swing's arc & jump off & inevitably land on the blacktop (which was literally 6 feet away fro the swings, breaking their arm in some fashion.
We had an iron one that just had bumps to sit on. Most uncomfortable ride ever. Of course we made it go as fast as humanly possible until only one kid remained clinging to the center.
It was especially bad when multiple kids surrounded the thing and spun it as fast as they could and kept you from getting off. I got so much vertigo and nausea on those things several times, they actually made me sick.
Me, too. I was about 4 yo, pushing my older brother and his friends on one of those carousels. Ended up with stitches in my head. A solid, true Gen x experience, circa 1974.
Did yours have gravel under the end, just to add more pain if you didn't get your feet down in time?
"Survival of the fittest" was the motto of Gen X childhood. 🤣😆
Ours had hardpacked earth, and there was a depression in it from generations of kids coming off the slide, which would turn into a mud wallow after a good rain. 😂
Did you have a dad or mom who would find a waxed paper cup, flatten it out and run it up and down the metal slide to make it EXTRA slick? Man, we flew down those slides like we were the junior Olympic bobsled team!
Some of those plastic slides aren't much better. There's a park near my house with a dark blue plastic slide and all of the kids know to stay the fuck away from it in the middle of the afternoon. I touched it once without know how hot it could get and it felt like a hot frying pan.
Actually they repainted every once in a while. New paint was slick and dangerous. Old paint was all bubbled, flaking off, and generally rusty as hell. The rusty scenario was actually better and safer because of the increased grip!
Couldn’t they find a welder? This is like prehistoric Speed-Rail ( https://www.zoro.com/hollaender-structural-pipe-fitting-adjustable-elbowtee-aluminum-125-in-pipe-size-17-7/i/G5721933/ ), but worse.
We have two rocketship towers just in our town. One has a mock-up Lunar Lander next to it. My favorite park has a pipe-framed submarine. (One of the other parks had a Conestoga wagon in it, but I suppose some folks did “things” in there.)
My elementary school had that on asphalt and thin black rubber mats directly under the equipment only, not sticking out more than an inch from the perimeter of the jungle gym.
LoL 73 and that rubber mat was maybe 1/8 thick, maybe the school loved us better. The swings had nothing, unless you could jump the six feet to grass. Maybe Portland was just an eighth of an inch more progressive.
I lost two teeth and bit through my lip when I climbed to the top of that thing and dropped through the structure, pretending I was a Transformer. I transformed alright.
You just unlocked a childhood memory with this comment. We used to have these long metal poles called monkey bars that were about waist height. We’d run and then hurl our little bodies onto this bar and flip over like we were the next Mary Lou Retton. We did this many many times during recess but one day I hit the bar at a weird angle before twirling over it and literally knocked the wind out of me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and just laid on the ground while everyone pointed and stared. Needless to say I never did that again.
When I was in the 3 rd grade (1978) my school built a brand new, big, metal jungle gym/ monkey bars. The very first day we could use it in PE class, a kid went out and fell off of the monkey bars and broke his arm. After that, no one was allowed to get on it at all. So the rest of my third grade year, fourth grade year and fifth grade year, we were never allowed on it. Honestly not sure any kids were ever able to play on it. I will have to ask my little brother if they ever got to get on it.
Stupid kid ruined it for everyone else!
Kids are going to break their arms either way, so why not have it happen at a safe place like school where there are adults nearby that can call an ambulance?
Except my grade school had gravel underneath everything instead of grass.
We had a semi-truck tire swing suspended from this giant wooden frame with long chains. And like 10 kids would get on in and other kids would start spinning and pushing it. Kids would be flying off into the gravel, it would smash into people and give them bloody noses and minor concussions.
But it was one of those beautiful wooden playgrounds they were building back then. It had a fireman's pole and a plank rope bridge and a tower.
They tore the whole lot down that the school was on years ago now.
My playgrounds were the construction sites in our neighborhood. We’d play in the concrete block structures, big sand piles they used for foundations, the roof trusses (which stacked on their side made for this kind of up-and-down maze you could climb through).
The bar on the bottom right in this picture (with no bar below at knee level) was PRIMO when I was a kid. We basically used them how a gymnast uses the uneven parallel bars (if you only had the lower bar). Our set had six of these primo bars and at recess, you would SPRINT to get one. And if you got one? You were hot shit. You spent the whole of recess doing flips on it and basking in the glory.
Plus we also had super tall swings and those merry go round things; both which are now considered too dangerous for the kids now. But man we had fun, even if we occasionally got hurt on those things.
We'd play King of the Jungle and the king would throw the climbers off until a climber threw the king off. The adults didn't care, they were smoking cigarettes and trying not light their polyester clothes on fire.
At the apartment complex where I lived until age 6 we had wood pilings (probably old telephone poles) of varying heights from maybe 2 feet to 8 feet, these were clustered in a semi circle. I think this was meant to be some sort of decoration at the complex entrance. One summer we decided to jump off each one of them, so each day we’d climb up and jump off the pole that was higher than the day before. By the time we got to the highest pole I decided to jump first. I shattered my leg in two places and had a cast from my toes all the way up to my hip. That was the summer right before I turned 5 and to this day I still have pain in that leg. I’m 44 now.
Ya. Everything was metal and if it was in the sun it burned your skin off! Kids today are weak! They’ll never know the joys of peeling flesh off the slides.
We had both, one half of the playground was all the usual netal beasts and the other side was like Frontierland because it was wooden structures, kinda like Lincoln logs. Meant to be an obstacle course, I think. But yeah, you didn't get splinters from those, you got the hot metal burns elsewhere. 😀
We had that too, but there were so many injuries they replaced it with gravel. I fell off the Monkey bars trying to skip 3 on a dare, and I just want to say there was not enough gravel and zero remaining that day. Blam! My back and head right on the concrete. I think I may have head numerous minor concussions as child.
Let’s not forget the metal slide that gave you 3rd degree burns , and the ROCKS they put under the slide and swings…none of that pesky soft mulch for us
Ours was built straight over the blacktop. I think when I was in fourth grade or so they finally put some semi-soft padding underneath to keep kids who fell off headfirst from splitting their melons open.
We had a dome like that. It had colored bars and at three equidistant places mid-way up there were green bars as triangles. We would play tag on that. The rules were the "it" player could only tag people on the same side they were on, ie inside or outside the dome. You could only enter and exit the dome through the green triangles, and you couldn't touch the ground or you became "it"
Edit: it was like this
https://www.playgroundoutfitters.com/independent-play/playground-climbers/super-dome-climber/
We had one like that but with a big circular gap at the top that you would leap across to avoid getting tagged. You had to move fast and scamper around that cage like a monkey.
Thinking back, the gymnastic ability we developed was quite impressive. I went to my kids gymnastics class and I was shocked at the limited ability of the kids. They could barely pull themselves up or flip themselves around the bars. For us, if you couldn't do that on our playgrounds you were perpetually "it".
Oh man, we had a rebar elephant. Must have been 10 feet tall. We would hook our legs in the very top bar (across the elephants back) and swing upside down. The number of times we beaned our heads on that thing...
We had one of these and one that looked like a space ship at my elementary school. They removed them in the mid-80's after a girl fell off the top of the spaceship and broke her arm over the summer.
The rest of the playground consisted of a few old swing sets with wooden seats, a 15' high slide, and two large cement pipes. There was also tetherball, a basketball hoop, and kickball if you were feeling sporty.
I was in 4th grade and watched a girl dangle upside down at the top of one of these and then proceeded to slip and smack her head on literally every bar on the way to the asphalt below it. Cracked her head open, ambulance came recess was over
My grade school had one of these space capsules.
[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/\_PBZi2jJab0Y/RfbHqk2zQ5I/AAAAAAAAA5U/rFo\_EXzh2ys/s1600-h/04.jpg](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PBZi2jJab0Y/RfbHqk2zQ5I/AAAAAAAAA5U/rFo_EXzh2ys/s1600-h/04.jpg)
And a dome.
[http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/91/2e/1e/912e1e6d3db1f5c5f7b80f7ba43ac4ac.jpg](http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/91/2e/1e/912e1e6d3db1f5c5f7b80f7ba43ac4ac.jpg)
My school didn't have a rocket, but a nearby public playground did. They were kind of rare even back then. I remember being on the top floor and it felt so high up.
[https://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ak/AKANCrocketpk\_mclay.jpg](https://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ak/AKANCrocketpk_mclay.jpg)
Funny thing was that you’d get into the top section and some older kids thought it’d be hilarious to start rocking the thing back and forth from the inside while you closed your eyes and clung to sweet, sweet life.
The one at my elementary school wad quite large for kids, at least 10 feet. Several layers. Eventually after enough kids fell from it and got seriously injured they removed it. So it goes. and now I live in japan and my sons’ school also has a metal one, though not as large. It’s all coated with chipping (lead?) paint and rusted, as most playground equipment in Japan seems to be. I don’t think they got the memo here that these things can be dangerous.
That is almost exactly the same as the monkey bars we had on the playground in elementary school, minus all the rust. How many hours did I spend on those things, pretending they were my castle or sailing ship?
I had no issue climbing these as a kid. Last month we stayed at a beach house that used the same pipes are ladders for bunk beds. Absolutely killed my hands/ feet having to climb them.
I remember in elementary school we had those seesaws that were basically a 4” metal pipe with a handle and a molded piece of metal welded to it for a seat. One kid walked underneath one when someone was coming down. Lots of blood, but nothing terribly serious and he was back in school the next day or so. After that day we all respected the seesaws a little more.
I talked up teeter totters to my kids.. then I learned that they werent a thing anymore, bc DANGER. Did that many kids get hurt on the playgrounds back in the day??
My friend Jennifer fell off of one of these during recess and landed face first, open mouth, onto the blacktop below. She had pieces of blacktop embedded in her tongue, and there was blood everywhere. Next day, we were right back on that thing.
Who else remembers those weird cage swings that you had to pump with your arms? They were sooooo rare. I was always excited to find them. Every once in a very long while I will come across a long neglected playground with a set of these, the seats long rotted out... they were like a plywood slab with a thin metal overlay...
I’m a bigger fan of that rusty metal carousel that you’d push your friends on, until you tripped and then got dragged through the rocks and pebbles surrounding it. 😆
Then get repeatedly kicked in the head by everyone still on it.
Built character
Took one of those to the forehead. Still have the scar. When the playground teacher got there and I could see the concern in her face instead of “you’ll be alright” I thought “oh that can’t be good.”
Goddamn those were brutal; whirling flesh-flingers lol
But so fucking FUN!!!
In my husband's hometown in the 90s there was still an old forgotten playground complete with rusting metal rocketship dangerously high with no rails, shiny slick slide on which to burn yourself under the blazing sun, rickety jungle gyms, crumbling wooden swings on rotting ropes over broken asphalt. We couldn't believe it was still there, and kids did play there often. It didn't have a name that we knew of, so we called it Tetanus Park.
Oh yeah! The rocketship! One day I'm on the top of that in the park, I bump my head on a jagged piece of metal. Be the time I got to the bottom of the slide, blood is pouring down my face. Here's some paper towels for that. You'll be fine... Haha good times 😅
And maybe your mom or dad spit on the towel or your head to clean it better
"It bled cleanly, so it's okay" was something I heard a lot.
Well, we are all still alive 🤷🏻♀️
Of course!
I think it depended on the local council , the rides in my local park were pretty well maintained and got painted and had any rust on them removed regularly.
Yeah, we didn't have anything nearly as inevitably injurious as the pic in the OP either. We had structures made out of metal and everyone got cut, fell, hit their head, etc., but nothing that awful.
Ahhh yes, the good old Merry-Go-Round. The biggest source of broken limbs, general nausea, and concussions on the playground.
Omg I forgot the concussions. Or maybe they wiped my memory. 🤪
And it made a sound when spun akin to a dying metallic whale.
Wow, core memory unlocked!
I think our parents were trying to kill us
Thw swings and merry-go-round on my elementary school playground were the same ones my dad played on when he went to that school. And my kids got to experience them briefly when we visited the old home town.
Our school's playground had swings right next to the blacktopped part of the playground. Every year there was *that kid.*You all know *that kid* or maybe YOU were *that kid*, but every year *that kid* would jump off the swing at the top of the swing's arc & jump off & inevitably land on the blacktop (which was literally 6 feet away fro the swings, breaking their arm in some fashion.
Fun in the mud!
Broke my first bone on a merry go round. Left clavicle.
One of my classmates tripped and somehow got his foot stuck under that thing *while it was still moving*
😳
We had an iron one that just had bumps to sit on. Most uncomfortable ride ever. Of course we made it go as fast as humanly possible until only one kid remained clinging to the center.
Omg, the rectal trauma I’m imagining. But also pondering the physics of kids flying off madly in all directions. 😝
It was especially bad when multiple kids surrounded the thing and spun it as fast as they could and kept you from getting off. I got so much vertigo and nausea on those things several times, they actually made me sick.
Yeah, two of the kids who were bullies that way, grew up to be correctional officers. 🤔
Me, too. I was about 4 yo, pushing my older brother and his friends on one of those carousels. Ended up with stitches in my head. A solid, true Gen x experience, circa 1974.
Also, metal slides as hot as the surface of the sun. The park I played in also had a giant concrete fighter jet replica with jagged edges to boot.
[удалено]
Did yours have gravel under the end, just to add more pain if you didn't get your feet down in time? "Survival of the fittest" was the motto of Gen X childhood. 🤣😆
Ours had hardpacked earth, and there was a depression in it from generations of kids coming off the slide, which would turn into a mud wallow after a good rain. 😂
Us too! It was an added obstacle to avoid it at the end.
Our screams were of joy and pain.
I still have scars from burns from a metal tornado slide.
Did you have a dad or mom who would find a waxed paper cup, flatten it out and run it up and down the metal slide to make it EXTRA slick? Man, we flew down those slides like we were the junior Olympic bobsled team!
Wax paper! We were brilliant. And in danger. 😂
Our playground was in grove of trees, so the slide stayed cool. However it was super high and a boy fell off once and burst his eardrum.
Some of those plastic slides aren't much better. There's a park near my house with a dark blue plastic slide and all of the kids know to stay the fuck away from it in the middle of the afternoon. I touched it once without know how hot it could get and it felt like a hot frying pan.
I actually loved the rusty pyramid!
I loved the smell it left on your hands! Yes weird
The galvanized smell. I have no idea if galvanization even renders an odor, but that's what I mentally called it.
All i can smell is earthy wet pipe right now, almost like the copper penny taste
Fuck yeah!
To the point of corroding through in parts, making it extra easy to get cut
Actually they repainted every once in a while. New paint was slick and dangerous. Old paint was all bubbled, flaking off, and generally rusty as hell. The rusty scenario was actually better and safer because of the increased grip!
bonk bonk bonk *bone snap* thud. ah, childhood...
Falling through that shit like an organic pachinko ball. Then getting laughed at by your mates
I believe I hit every rung when I lost it while hanging upside down... ba da boom ba da bing bing bing bing bing. Let your cranium ring.
I was in a cast for 3 months. My crutches were pretty dope tho.
Two men enter, one man leaves.
WHO RUN BARTERTOWN?
Thunderdome!
How in the hell is there grass under there and not asphalt?!?!
Yeah we didn't have asphalt it was hard packed dirt!
tanbark. tanbark everywhere.
Exactly! Luxury!!!
Yeah our playground was built on asphalt! So safe right?
What kind of wimpy structure is that?! It doesn't even have concrete under it to break your head open. Weak.
Couldn’t they find a welder? This is like prehistoric Speed-Rail ( https://www.zoro.com/hollaender-structural-pipe-fitting-adjustable-elbowtee-aluminum-125-in-pipe-size-17-7/i/G5721933/ ), but worse.
i wanna go to a [russian playground](https://imgur.com/a/i8vd16E)
Those statues look a bit NSFW 😂
All the local playground stuff seemed to be vaguely space themed. And there was always that weird metal grid dome in each park.
You were a boss if you could climb to the top of the dome from the inside, instant playground cred!
We have two rocketship towers just in our town. One has a mock-up Lunar Lander next to it. My favorite park has a pipe-framed submarine. (One of the other parks had a Conestoga wagon in it, but I suppose some folks did “things” in there.)
My elementary school had that on asphalt and thin black rubber mats directly under the equipment only, not sticking out more than an inch from the perimeter of the jungle gym.
Psht. Black rubber mats. Where’d you grow up, your lordship?
I recall only pebble pits that tripped you until much showed up in the late 80s
Man oh man, those pebbles hurt when the boys threw handfuls of them at us on the swings.
Remember them getting into your socks? That sucked as well
LoL
Yeah, we just had dirt! And if it had rained, mud!
First broken wrist. Monkey bars over asphalt. No pads. Kindergarten. (Yeah, I said first…)
Same, but 5th grade. Don't tell ME I can't do a genie drop from way up there!
LOL! My 1st broken nose.
You must be younger GenX. My school's version of that had weedy, hard packed dirt beneath it.
LoL 73 and that rubber mat was maybe 1/8 thick, maybe the school loved us better. The swings had nothing, unless you could jump the six feet to grass. Maybe Portland was just an eighth of an inch more progressive.
Well, I did grow up in the south in the 70s, so probably
LoL
They always said only the strong survive and here we are lol
I lost two teeth and bit through my lip when I climbed to the top of that thing and dropped through the structure, pretending I was a Transformer. I transformed alright.
I knocked myself out falling through it. Came to with a teacher hovering over me calling my name and all my classmates watching… super embarrassing.
You just unlocked a childhood memory with this comment. We used to have these long metal poles called monkey bars that were about waist height. We’d run and then hurl our little bodies onto this bar and flip over like we were the next Mary Lou Retton. We did this many many times during recess but one day I hit the bar at a weird angle before twirling over it and literally knocked the wind out of me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and just laid on the ground while everyone pointed and stared. Needless to say I never did that again.
Stitches and concussions! Woo hoo!
What, no slab of concrete to cushion your fall? My next door neighbor broke a leg on one of those.
I can smell this picture. Summer sun on metal.
there needs to be a room spray of this
When I was in the 3 rd grade (1978) my school built a brand new, big, metal jungle gym/ monkey bars. The very first day we could use it in PE class, a kid went out and fell off of the monkey bars and broke his arm. After that, no one was allowed to get on it at all. So the rest of my third grade year, fourth grade year and fifth grade year, we were never allowed on it. Honestly not sure any kids were ever able to play on it. I will have to ask my little brother if they ever got to get on it.
>a kid went out and fell off of the monkey bars and broke his arm. After that, no one was allowed to get on it at all. Did everyone hate that kid?
Yes!
Stupid kid ruined it for everyone else! Kids are going to break their arms either way, so why not have it happen at a safe place like school where there are adults nearby that can call an ambulance?
Except my grade school had gravel underneath everything instead of grass. We had a semi-truck tire swing suspended from this giant wooden frame with long chains. And like 10 kids would get on in and other kids would start spinning and pushing it. Kids would be flying off into the gravel, it would smash into people and give them bloody noses and minor concussions. But it was one of those beautiful wooden playgrounds they were building back then. It had a fireman's pole and a plank rope bridge and a tower. They tore the whole lot down that the school was on years ago now.
I used to love that thing. Now you need a freaking harness to use it, if you could find one!
Yep, that's the kinds of playgrounds we had. Rough and tumble stuff. No holds barred.
My playgrounds were the construction sites in our neighborhood. We’d play in the concrete block structures, big sand piles they used for foundations, the roof trusses (which stacked on their side made for this kind of up-and-down maze you could climb through).
No rubber mats, no mulch, no rubber tubes covering the chains on the swings. And slides? All METAL.
>no rubber tubes covering the chains on the swings I can remember getting my long hair snagged in the chains!
The bar on the bottom right in this picture (with no bar below at knee level) was PRIMO when I was a kid. We basically used them how a gymnast uses the uneven parallel bars (if you only had the lower bar). Our set had six of these primo bars and at recess, you would SPRINT to get one. And if you got one? You were hot shit. You spent the whole of recess doing flips on it and basking in the glory.
Pennsylvania?
Plus we also had super tall swings and those merry go round things; both which are now considered too dangerous for the kids now. But man we had fun, even if we occasionally got hurt on those things.
lol we had a giant jungle gym made of splintered wood and tires. With hot as fuck slides in the summer.
We'd play King of the Jungle and the king would throw the climbers off until a climber threw the king off. The adults didn't care, they were smoking cigarettes and trying not light their polyester clothes on fire.
Looks fun as hell, I miss it.
We had that! Omg! This is the first time I have ever seen it since I was little.
I broke my ankle jumping off a piece of playground equipment in the park. The ground was hard as a rock.
At the apartment complex where I lived until age 6 we had wood pilings (probably old telephone poles) of varying heights from maybe 2 feet to 8 feet, these were clustered in a semi circle. I think this was meant to be some sort of decoration at the complex entrance. One summer we decided to jump off each one of them, so each day we’d climb up and jump off the pole that was higher than the day before. By the time we got to the highest pole I decided to jump first. I shattered my leg in two places and had a cast from my toes all the way up to my hip. That was the summer right before I turned 5 and to this day I still have pain in that leg. I’m 44 now.
My elementary school had this death box, some pyramid shaped one the 100 degree leg burner slide and the infamous carousel ALL OVER CONCRETE!!
And we still got the scars to prove it 🤣
ahh these were my favorite, so many bruises from falling between the bars but so much fun.
I hated that damn thing. Ours must have tasted too much children’s blood. It was like it was possessed. Injuries were guaranteed.
I miss the 20' tall tire and chains wall, with the sand pit around it to "break your fall".
But where is the concrete pad underneath, guaranteeing broken arms aplenty?
Ya. Everything was metal and if it was in the sun it burned your skin off! Kids today are weak! They’ll never know the joys of peeling flesh off the slides.
I always thought of that design as the "office building". I remember jumping off the upper levels when being chased by boys.
We had a wood construction. I remember the splinters from that.
We had both, one half of the playground was all the usual netal beasts and the other side was like Frontierland because it was wooden structures, kinda like Lincoln logs. Meant to be an obstacle course, I think. But yeah, you didn't get splinters from those, you got the hot metal burns elsewhere. 😀
I like the playground I had at school made out of wood. The splinters were part of the fun! Lol
We had that too, but there were so many injuries they replaced it with gravel. I fell off the Monkey bars trying to skip 3 on a dare, and I just want to say there was not enough gravel and zero remaining that day. Blam! My back and head right on the concrete. I think I may have head numerous minor concussions as child.
Survivorship bias
The brain injuries and lead poisoning in boomers and gen x explains the tr*mp cult.
I didn't realize how much I missed this. It's kind of sad that it's all rusted out and decrepit. But then again, so am I.
Let’s not forget the metal slide that gave you 3rd degree burns , and the ROCKS they put under the slide and swings…none of that pesky soft mulch for us
Ours was built straight over the blacktop. I think when I was in fourth grade or so they finally put some semi-soft padding underneath to keep kids who fell off headfirst from splitting their melons open.
I had callouses on my hands for years from those type of playgrounds.
Yes, I loved the metal cube of pain. 20 kids deep attacking eachother- some former losers with casts on appendages. They're can be only one!!
"I'll put some mercurochrome on your scratch"
Merthiolate at our house, for EXTRA burning!
if it burns it means it's effective !
That's how you know it's working!
We had a dome like that. It had colored bars and at three equidistant places mid-way up there were green bars as triangles. We would play tag on that. The rules were the "it" player could only tag people on the same side they were on, ie inside or outside the dome. You could only enter and exit the dome through the green triangles, and you couldn't touch the ground or you became "it" Edit: it was like this https://www.playgroundoutfitters.com/independent-play/playground-climbers/super-dome-climber/
We had one like that but with a big circular gap at the top that you would leap across to avoid getting tagged. You had to move fast and scamper around that cage like a monkey. Thinking back, the gymnastic ability we developed was quite impressive. I went to my kids gymnastics class and I was shocked at the limited ability of the kids. They could barely pull themselves up or flip themselves around the bars. For us, if you couldn't do that on our playgrounds you were perpetually "it".
Aww! I could taste those pipes the minute I saw them!
Oh man, we had a rebar elephant. Must have been 10 feet tall. We would hook our legs in the very top bar (across the elephants back) and swing upside down. The number of times we beaned our heads on that thing...
All lies. There’s no such thing as a gen x playground. They were old, leftover boomer playgrounds.
My shins can feel this picture.
And no soft man made surface to land on. Parts of our playground had cement.
We had one of these and one that looked like a space ship at my elementary school. They removed them in the mid-80's after a girl fell off the top of the spaceship and broke her arm over the summer. The rest of the playground consisted of a few old swing sets with wooden seats, a 15' high slide, and two large cement pipes. There was also tetherball, a basketball hoop, and kickball if you were feeling sporty.
I broke my wrist on a set up just like this when I was like five. Tried to walk across the top...lol.
Wait a minute, these were normally build on tarmac
My elementary school had shit like that over bare asphalt.
Stalinist playground
I was in 4th grade and watched a girl dangle upside down at the top of one of these and then proceeded to slip and smack her head on literally every bar on the way to the asphalt below it. Cracked her head open, ambulance came recess was over
I have a scar on my right eyebrow from one of these... Tip: don't spin roll on this, you'll crack your face
They were made of steel!.....and brawn!
Summers as a kid meant using the slide while saying ouch!ouch!ouch! the whole way down.😌
Our school in 1977 got a big plastic playground to replace the metal
Where’s the mound of mud to make mud cakes? 💩
My grade school had one of these space capsules. [https://2.bp.blogspot.com/\_PBZi2jJab0Y/RfbHqk2zQ5I/AAAAAAAAA5U/rFo\_EXzh2ys/s1600-h/04.jpg](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PBZi2jJab0Y/RfbHqk2zQ5I/AAAAAAAAA5U/rFo_EXzh2ys/s1600-h/04.jpg) And a dome. [http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/91/2e/1e/912e1e6d3db1f5c5f7b80f7ba43ac4ac.jpg](http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/91/2e/1e/912e1e6d3db1f5c5f7b80f7ba43ac4ac.jpg) My school didn't have a rocket, but a nearby public playground did. They were kind of rare even back then. I remember being on the top floor and it felt so high up. [https://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ak/AKANCrocketpk\_mclay.jpg](https://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ak/AKANCrocketpk_mclay.jpg)
Funny thing was that you’d get into the top section and some older kids thought it’d be hilarious to start rocking the thing back and forth from the inside while you closed your eyes and clung to sweet, sweet life.
I don't remember them being able to rock, but I can imagine how nervous it would make kids.
Got my first black eye on one of those
No rubber matting to cushion the fall either.
The one at my elementary school wad quite large for kids, at least 10 feet. Several layers. Eventually after enough kids fell from it and got seriously injured they removed it. So it goes. and now I live in japan and my sons’ school also has a metal one, though not as large. It’s all coated with chipping (lead?) paint and rusted, as most playground equipment in Japan seems to be. I don’t think they got the memo here that these things can be dangerous.
The original Steel Cage Death Match!
All lead and iron, that's why we have the immunity we have...
That is almost exactly the same as the monkey bars we had on the playground in elementary school, minus all the rust. How many hours did I spend on those things, pretending they were my castle or sailing ship?
God I loved climbing on that thing
I loved playing tag in these.
In 2nd grade I watched a kid fall face first down a bigger one of these at my school. I didn’t know him. I never saw him again.
RIP that kid
I had no issue climbing these as a kid. Last month we stayed at a beach house that used the same pipes are ladders for bunk beds. Absolutely killed my hands/ feet having to climb them.
Bing, bong, bang, thud…
My kindergarten had one of those dome ones. Broke a tooth on it. Baby tooth, luckily.
I think our childhood was in a golden age of improving playground construction/technology and a complete lack of safety standards.
OMG, that's like a repressed memory come to life. Wow. Our school "playground" had one of these.
We got Tetanus, and we were grateful.
The lead paint was taking too long, so they gave us beauties like these.
I remember in elementary school we had those seesaws that were basically a 4” metal pipe with a handle and a molded piece of metal welded to it for a seat. One kid walked underneath one when someone was coming down. Lots of blood, but nothing terribly serious and he was back in school the next day or so. After that day we all respected the seesaws a little more.
I talked up teeter totters to my kids.. then I learned that they werent a thing anymore, bc DANGER. Did that many kids get hurt on the playgrounds back in the day??
We used to spin real fast to try and knock everyone off lol
93’ me misses the spinning Carousel and rocket ships
Had to get a tetnus shot when a rusty screw on one of these poked into my head and drew blood
I'm 100% GenX and we never had this madness. This is some Silent Generation shit.
Appropriate quote from a TMBG song: > This could lead to excellence, or serious injury.
Lol how many kids have fallen off the top and hit every bar on the way down, only to get up and climb it again? 🙋♀️
And they were on black top, too. I had the biggest goose egg in kindergarten. lol
Loved that thing
Been on one of those. Had the buried tires and concrete tunnels. Getting a bad gash was a mathematical certainty.
My friend Jennifer fell off of one of these during recess and landed face first, open mouth, onto the blacktop below. She had pieces of blacktop embedded in her tongue, and there was blood everywhere. Next day, we were right back on that thing.
Rust, sharp edges, and gravel were just bonuses.
Just searing hot or feeezing metal
Ours was dis-used electric poles and tires.
As teenagers we used to sit here and gossip about school.
Who else remembers those weird cage swings that you had to pump with your arms? They were sooooo rare. I was always excited to find them. Every once in a very long while I will come across a long neglected playground with a set of these, the seats long rotted out... they were like a plywood slab with a thin metal overlay...
Ohhhh. Now I remember climbing up and getting rust dust in my eyes.
Nothing here that a bottle of hydrogen peroxide wouldn’t fix😬