Say the word "summer" to a hundred people and ask for a memory and you'll probably get a hundred memories. Summer, especially to a kid, has always meant a certain kind of freedom. For sure, it's freedom from the shackles of school and homework, but it's also freedom to do and go and exist within a wonderful time span that is mostly one's own. For the kid who is a reader, it's three months at the public library. For the sports enthusiast, it's week after week of baseball or softball or swimming or biking or golf. For the lazy slug, it's endless mornings to sleep away. Add to that the family picnics and reunions, trips to the beach or nearby city museums, family vacations, visits from out of town friends and relatives, fireworks and watermelon, and one could say that summer is probably the best part of a kid's calendar year with the possible exception of Christmas Day.
My own summers were a little of all of the above. We played neighborhood baseball and kickball games, we biked all over town, we hit the public library at least twice every week and spent lazy hours sitting out under the pear tree reading, and we helped our mom can and freeze for the coming winter.
We lived in a small city in the Midwest in the 1950's. WWII was still discussed by our parents who lived it. Every few blocks there was a one room corner grocery store where a kid could get a bottle of Coke for seven cents and penny candy for a penny. TV was for Saturday morning and after supper. And the music of the day was rock'n'roll of a gentler sort than today's music. Kitchens were formica and chrome, the freezers in our refrigerators held one box of ice cream, an ice cube tray and maybe a can of frozen orange juice. Going to the movies could mean an entire afternoon as we watched cartoons, the feature film, and then maybe another film. But the mecca of summer kid happiness in my elementary school days was our neighborhood park program
Every day was something special. The Pet Parade, the Watermelon Eating Contest, the Water Balloon Battle, the Talent Show, the Doll Show, the Hobby Show, Ice Cream Day to name a few. Add to that a terrific collection of stilts, pogo sticks, badminton gear, hoola hoops, baseball equipment, basketballs, a vast assortment of board games, and the fact that the ice cream and popsicle vendors knew every park in town, and there was literally everything a kid could hope for on a summer day at our disposal..
The Park Board supplied us with high school students who organized and monitored our activities and who became heroes to many of us little kids. In their khaki shirts and shorts, they were the US Park Rangers of our small town, answering every conceivable question a pack of noisy kids could ask, bandaging up our scraped knees and elbows with plastic bandaids, and maintaining an enthusiasm and cheeriness that kept us all high on "going to the park."
There were several parks within walking or biking distance from our house. Every neighborhood had a park and the town wasn't that big. My favorite was Westside Park which was just a couple of blocks away from our house. Westside Park had two entries, one at the dead end of Prospect Street, and one at the dead end of Madison Street. If the park hadn't been there, either Prospect or Madison Street would have gone clear through the park, met the other street head on, and eliminated the need for one of the two street names to exist.
We entered from the Madison Street dead end because it had at least thirty railway tie steps leading down to the park below. The park itself was in a basin of sorts, surrounded on all sides by high hills which made entering the park a somewhat magical experience in itself. For my younger sisters and I, running down those thirty steps at a break-neck pace was part of the adventure of going to the park. Rolling on our sides down any of the hills to the park at the bottom was another. On the far side of the park, behind the high school, was a tire swing hanging from a huge old tree that when one really got to swinging back and forth allowed him to arc far out into the open over the floor of the park fifteen or twenty feet below. More than one kid let go just to see what would happen. They usually hit the ground with a great resounding "thwump" and after the shock of impact wore off, got up to continue their play.
We also had very tall swings, the kind you rarely see at city parks anymore because of fear of lawsuits by city officials. The champion swingers, those with great style and practice, could get their swing so high that those watching were certain they would complete the circle and go over the top. I personally never saw that happen, but there were legends that said it had been done.
The monkey bars were similar to the kind that the military uses today to train recruits, but we were kids who knew no bounds. We were serious about play. What was a fall of eight feet from a maze of iron bars? We were tough kids. And besides, that's what doctors were for. We scrambled all over the monkey bars, up and over other climbers, even playing games of tag on them. Occasionaly some brave souls actually walked across the high horizontal ladder at the top like a circus high wire act, the rest of us watching from below with our hearts in our throats and great admiration.
And the merry-go-round could have been named "The Puke Machine" because of all the kids who got car sick but still thought the merry-go-round was fun. Nothing like the small plastic jobs of today's parks, ours was an old two-tiered wooden job with almost no safety handles and only a rut of dirt beneath it (created by the feet of zillions of kids over the years kicking their way to high speeds of centrifugal force) to break their fall or catch their vomit when they eventually hit their limit of good clean fun. At least once a day some kid would let go too soon and go flying out into the grass. This was always fun to watch as long as it wasn't you.
And of course, the slide, as tall as a skyscraper, all metal, and hot as blazes on a ninety degree day was the zenith of delight. Clambering up the steep steps, trying to push off any guy behind you who was trying to pass ( yes pass) you on the way up, you made it to the top and in that one second of giddy glory you surveyed your domain. Your park. Your world. Heck, you could almost see China from up there. And then some kid behind you accidently or otherwise pushed you forward and suddenly, and always before you were ready, you were plummeting downward on a surface as hot as a frying pan until you landed in the gravel below. And then you ran back to the steps to do it all over again.
Hunger was usually the reason most kids left the park around noon. Mothers and chores or piano lessons or swimming or baseball practice were the only reasons some of us didn't return immediately. But if you couldn't go back that afternoon, as my mother used to say, "the park will still be there tomorrow."
The park is still there, all these tomorrows later. We've taken several sets of grandchildren rolling down those hills and spent many happy evenings watching them play on much safer equipment.. It's all they know, and they don't seem to mind. The park has a different name now, too, in honor of two much-respected educators who have passed on.
In many ways, the park is just the same. The beautiful back yards that surround the park are there. So is the stalwart dark brown wooden shelter with its gathering of picnic tables. Madison Street and Prospect Street still lead up to the park. The huge tree with the tire swing is gone. Probably just as well. Kids today don't seem to bounce as well as we did.
And the old entrance to the park from the Madison Street dead end is there, but the railroad tie steps we used to run down have been dug out leaving another grassy hill. Everyone enters by a new safer portal off of Prospect Street. That's OK. If a silly old-timer like me wants to enter by Madison Street, who need steps? I'll just roll down that hill one more time.
