Why you can't play on history's most thrilling piece of playground equipment

You should still be able to find one behind the physics building at UC Santa Cruz. Put there by a visiting physics educator.

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There’s a reference that draws a picture! Well, an exact audio memory…

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Oh man. The thought of flying around one of these while flames / sparks shoot out the top… I need to either lie down and recover, or go build one… hmmm…

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I’ve always been a fan of the rocket park, which there was one in my hometown where my mother played on when she was a kid, and later I played on it. I think they’re on the dangerous list now, but I hope they get preserved:

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Man alive, that brings back memories. And on a hot summer day, you had your choice: stay on and scald, or be hurled to the earth. But the worst part was the turning stomachs. Golly, that was fun!

By the time I began to reproduce, these too were hard to find.

Edited to add a flood of memories:

One childhood playground had a contraption called a Swinging Gate. It’s literally just a gate on a post, and swivels 360 degrees. Simple pleasures.

swinging-gate

The other thing I suddenly remember from The Olden Days is that certain teeter-totters were fixed to the static bar by a chain. This was because the fulcrum was adjustable; that is, you ( a mere child!) could move the tottering board to one of three positions, making one side longer (and the other shorter, obviously.) I guess this was to accommodate different loads of differently massed children?

Lastly, I have this really strong memory of kindergarten or maybe first grade. One of those domed monkey bar structures had fallen off/rusted out of its concrete foundation, and fallen over on its side. We were forbidden to approach it, so of course my buddy and I — and our imaginary friend, The April Ghost (!) — did just that. I don’t remember much else other than the three of us had a blast playing on that wobbly deathtrap, and that we got in a lot of trouble for it. Well, two of us, anyhow.

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There’s a Murdery Carosel in my city that looks very much like this, bur due to age now has an exciting element of added random vertical wobble. A great fun when inebriated or otherwise chemically enhanced.

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It seems like this would be a lot safer if it was just built for one victim at a time, with a counterweight. But I am inclined to believe that if something is this universally banned, there is a sound and disturbing evidence base for that, regardless of how safe I might imagine it to be.

I once had to design an art installation which doubled as a functioning (standards-compliant) playground. When you read those regulations, and start to think about the scenarios they aim to prevent, you become very conscious of how anything bigger than a shoe can serve as a means to dash, flense, pulpefy, bisect or garrotte a small child.

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Witch’s Hat was the worst for me.

Heavy thing spinning at high speed - nice impact danger for passing people.
Spin around at high speed - nice throwing off danger.
Climb up high on something unstable - nice falling danger.
Swing side to side with a solid column in the middle - nice crushing danger for anyone underneath/hanging on the inside.

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A park across the highway from Tinker Air Force Base in OKC still has one of these.

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The tipi-shaped toy I mentioned earlier was one of these Witch Hats, but the bottom of it was braced against the center post so that it would rotate but not swing. It was still pretty dangerous.

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Of course two of the playgrounds where I grew up had actual, decommissioned fighter planes in them. One park had an F-86 Saber Jet and the other an F7U Cutlass.

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I took physics at UC Santa Cruz. Our professor took us to the one behind the physics and had us sit on it in groups and play catch while he spun it so that we could see the that balls motion curves from our perspective. The activity was part of a lecture explained how railroad rails wear on one side more than the other due to the spinning of the Earth.

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There’s something very similar to this at a playground here in my town. It wasn’t very exciting when I tried it with my daughter, but then it’s probably VERY old at this point.

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That looks like so much fun - especially hanging outside and swinging around…whee!
:laughing:

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Oh, man! do I remember that rocket! on a hot summer day in Texas it would become a frying pan for our (usually) bare feet and trying to slide down the metal slide was just asking for scorched legs!
my brother and I would play on the one near our grandparents’ home in Central Texas for hours!

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Yeesh, maybe don’t do that. :grimacing:

I feel like I’ve opened up a large can of traumatic playground memories here. I’m trying to remember if I ever saw these steel playground death traps in pristine condition but I only ever remember them as rusted, stripped to the bare metal hideous things, like something from a post-apocalyptic landscape - or 1970s/80s Britain as it was known.

Also in my very first school (now demolished) we had the recovered front part of a colliery diesel locomotive to play on. Yes, really. Plenty of opportunities to cut yourself on sharp edges and spikey bits.

We had one of those too! Imagine this but much larger and a concrete floor underneath.

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Sometimes I got to go into town and play at Fort Collins City Park, and a few times I played at a smaller, derelict version of it just west of the present park, thrilling to teeter totter axles with no boards, the spindle for a carousel, and a dwindling number of swings and partial swings.

Out where I lived, though, there were different playgrounds. A semi-abandoned go-kart track. The ongoing subdivision construction sites nearby. The foothills, the reservoir, the dump, the prairie dog town, the occasional crawdad pond, the archery range, and best of all, the abandoned quarry just up the road. There were EXPLOSIVES signs around it, and a shed locked with a padlock like a cowbell, and we dug in the crumbly sides. My intrepid friend tunneled in it while I stood apart and shook my head. We called it “The Bomb Hole.” Alas, it’s full of houses now.

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I did say “domed”, but really, it was more like this design, which was pretty popular in The Olden times:

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With nearly every surface lovingly polished by generations of sweaty little palms?

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In 1965, they decided to put in a nicer playground at our local elementary school. In retrospect, it was probably because the old swingset was rusted, and maybe not sunk into the grass far enough. We got a new swing set, what looked like a ladder set on poles to travel hand over hand, and this thing above, in an asphalt-paved lot. I call that dome the King of the Hill dome, because that’s what happened - one kid or group would be king, and push the peasants down onto the asphalt. So much playground fun. So many bruises and scrapes. :face_with_head_bandage:

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