[Interrupting your COVID updates with a old fart's reminisce.]

Anyone else have one of these growing up? We did. (Just imagine kids in 1970's bell bottoms and polyester instead of the pictured feedsacks.) If you really got it rocking, you could slam the center pole. ^(Newt?) No one lost a finger in the center, but there were a few broken arms from spinning off that bad boy. Standing was banned...when an adult was near. Pretty sure it was never completely empty at recess. I think they finally took it out by the time I left elementary, after decades of service.

many of those things did, in fact, kill me. but, each time, i was resurrected on the third day, sometimes the fourth day, in time to jump into a game of 4 squares on the sidewalk and then run past the swingsets, (where the ground was always littered with corpses) towards a quick beheading on the steel carousel hooked up to a mini bike motor.

The one I most remember was the bench seat spinning wheel, aka Wheel of Death.
Falling off to the outside was bad, falling inside meant at least a concussion.
Main goal was to get it spinning as fast as possible to achieve maximum G-Forces!



And the galvanized steel spiral slide was especially challenging in the hot summer sun

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Quote
MrNoBody
The one I most remember was the bench seat spinning wheel, aka Wheel of Death.
Falling off to the outside was bad, falling inside meant at least a concussion.
Main goal was to get it spinning as fast as possible to achieve maximum G-Forces!



And the galvanized steel spiral slide was especially challenging in the hot summer sun

right and the last one hanging on WINS! The one I remember was a solid floor all the way to the center - no sitting on the edge

So many childhood injuries! Some of those things look like they were designed by the kids who used them.....

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rj
AKA
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My playgrounds had everything mentioned so far. I remember epic tetherball lines when those first went it. Fairly low risk aside from concussion if you got distracted playing against the school's requisite Big Kid.

Nothing like a game of Jart Suicide. You weren't allowed to move as the lawn dart came your way.

My elementary school had a broken concrete culvert, perfect for running into during a game of tag. As a bonus, it was only five feet away from the centrifuge of death merry go round.

Even the 15-ft tall slide with no rails had the potential to thin out the juvenile population.

But I survived drinking from the garden hose, I was invincible.

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God yes, Monkey Bars! Unless you were a real slow learner, one slip (with the resulting “crotch landing”) taught boys the importance of holding on tight! (After the stars and birdies stopping circling your head )


Kids were a LOT tougher back then.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2020 06:14PM by testcase.

Monkey bars, jungle gym, that spinning wheel of death...

The latter was a park device, the others were at my elementary school and a couple of parks, Arroyo Viejo, if I recall correctly.

In later years we'd go to the park in the evening and some of the kids would drink and get on the little spinning wheel of death.

As I didn't drink and didn't care for some of the guys and dolls who would become mean and 'easy' drunks in later years, I felt it was my duty to spin the wheel of death for them.

Nobody died, but I was great and making it the Spinning Wheel of Hurl.

I confess to a little joy of sending anybody home covered in they're or somebody's 'hurl'.

The really fun part though, was that we'd do it time and time again.

I really, really wish there had been iPhones back then.

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