Category Archives: Playgrounds
Anybody remember “underducks”?…
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Anybody remember “underducks”? We would push our friends on the playground swings until they were going really high, then on your last push, run under the swing in an “underduck”. We loved being both an underducker and an underduckee. And I remember those “death-defying” feats, too, but on the monkey bars (the ones that you are supposed to traverse arm over arm from one side to the other – are those monkey bars?) we used to walk on top of them (we considered that to be quite a cool trick!), and also lie down on them face down, hold on with our hands and flip our legs over our bodies and flip to the ground. That was “neat”!!
On the Lower East Side we…
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On the Lower East Side we called them “sliding ponds” also. And yeah, I have to chuckle when I think about all the “death-defying” stunts we did on those things — and the swings! I never did it, but many of my friends loved to stand on those metal swings, pump as hard as they could and fly through the air just holding on to the chains. I was WAY too chicken to do that. I did love the monkey bars, though. – webdiva
P.S.114 in Canarsie was…
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P.S.114 in Canarsie was the place to go for a game of stickball, handball, football, basketball, skulley, Johnny on the Pony, Marbles, Knock Hockey, Punchball, Pitching nickels against the wall or the line, ringalevio, war, slapball and softball just to name a few. There was even some weird guy from Czeckloslavokia who used to hit a soccer[?] ball off his head, {what a strange boring game} but we could never get the ball from him. Glory Days! Mousey
The BEST schoolyard in Queens…
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The BEST schoolyard in Queens in the late ’60s – early ’70s was PS 108 by the entrance to the Aqueduct racetrack. It was relatively square, fenced all around and had poured cement “boxes” roughly 5′ x 5′. These boxes served as softball basepaths, football yardlines, stickball pitchers’ mounds, handball court short lines, and distance markers for stickball and automatics. Connected to the large square area, there was a perfect sized handball court and wall, and the “little schoolyard” – a blacktopped area surrounded by 3 walls and a fence, perfect for roller hockey. Any afternoon in the summer there could be a softball game (sometimes two), a basketball game, 3 stickball games and a handball game going on at once. Summer nights was Ringoleario and just hanging out. In the fall and winter, it was touch football and basketball. Everyone met at the schoolyard. Just show up and you’ll get in some kind of game. We’ll never forget it.
Sliding pond was the only…
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Sliding pond was the only name we used to called them in Da Bronx. The monkey bars were made of steel and anything else we used to climb on (like the big turtles,the cheese and all the benches) was made of concreat. There was no such thing as rubber mats,wood mulch or any type of padding on the playgrounds in any of the playgrounds I grew up in. It was all concreat or black top. If you fell and got hurt you would run upstairs to your mom. She would patch you up,and you would be back downstairs playing again. Now a days when kids get hurt in the playground, from playing too hard or from there own fault for doing something stupid, like we all used to do. Do you remember hearing this saying in the playground ” Go head I dare you, Chicken” Usually means somebody was going end up getting hurt. Now the kids run inside to there parents. Then the parents take them to the Lawyers office looking to sue somebody for there kids stupidity. Do you remember Johnny Pumps (Fire hydrants)? Thats what we used to call them in my neighbor hood………..
I don’t live in New York…
It’s a miracle we all aren’t…
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It’s a miracle we all aren’t dead from horrible playground accidents. How many of us did summersaults over the bars on the BIG sliding board, or went down it standing up? How about jumping off the the witches hat (that pole thing with the circular seat suspended from it)or merry-go-round after you got it spinning as fast as you could? How many of you had playgrounds that had dirt packed hard as cement under the monkey bars that you would hang head down from? I can’t imagine a city now constructing a playground without the eqipment being made out of pressure treated lumber & a truckload of wood mulch under every piece of it.
That was the question our…
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That was the question our parents always asked….. We had great organized playgrounds when we were growing up in the 60’s in suburban Cleveland but for some reason we’d always end up in my parents back yard…. Even though we’d continuosly break windows with the baseball (or other things) we’d still hang out in the yard. It seemed a magnet for all the kids in the neighborhood too. Where else could you develop “Mat Rash” by jumping into piles of packing foam or play wiffle ball with a badmitten raquet or participate in the ever popular action adventure game “DIE”, which pitted one “shooter” against the entire group to see who could fall off the garage, from a tree, down a hill into a creek, or basically DIE the coolest!!!! The best dead guy was rewarded with the chance to be the next judge and killer….What a game!!!