Got yet another one for my Forum friends. What's the proper ground cover for a 70s era small town playground? This is a grade school if that helps any. The rural school I went to growing up had a combo situation with a concrete area for basketball, dodge ball, etc and the rest was dirt for the swings, slides, merry-go-round, thether ball pole and a large area in the back for football, soccer and other games of the sort. However that was mid to late 1980s and I would like some other opinions. As usual any suggestions would be most welcomed.
My recollection is that while there was sand under the swings, etc., there was grass between different equipment.
My recollection of playgrounds of the 60s and 70s was well worn grass, dirt, sand, and pea stone. My kids in the 80s had wood chips and crumb rubber from ground up tires. Basketball court was asphalt or concrete.
Pete.
Grass, worn away to dirt under the high traffic areas. (Under swings, around the merry-go-round, base of the ladder and end of slides, ender the ends of the teeter-totter)
Mike
You guys grew up in the wussy era. Back in the 50s the playground was asphalt. If you fell off the jungle gym or jumped off a swing you quickly learned that if you didn't stick the landing you were going to hurt for awhile.
ndbprr You guys grew up in the wussy era. Back in the 50s the playground was asphalt. If you fell off the jungle gym or jumped off a swing you quickly learned that if you didn't stick the landing you were going to hurt for awhile.
There was a playground at the elementary school that had concrete under the Wheel of death and those animals with the big coil spring. I ripped many of knees tripping while pushing that wheel.
Pete
As I recall, the first school I went to (1964-70) had three buildings - the old brick building c.1940, a later larger building with the gym and lunchroom, and "the portable", an old 3-classroom wood building that had been moved a couple of times over the decades. I think the areas between the buildings may have been blacktop, the rest of the rather large playground was gravel.
The second school (1970-71) was newer (built late fifties) and had about half the play area paved with blacktop, with jungle gym and swings. The other half, where we played football, baseball or soccer, was gravel. In both cases, the gravel had sharp enough edges that if you fell it could cut through your pants into your knees.
By the way, the second school was part of the same school complex as the high school. The railroad line (MN&S' "high line") that ran in front of my house cut through the campus, so you had to cross the tracks to get to the high school football and baseball fields. That line is still in use by Progressive Rail.
Under the swings, teeter totters, and slide part of the playground I remember dirt with a little grass -- and grass on the hill that lead down to the school itself. Under the monkey bars it was concrete.
Elsewhere I remember concrete, and perhaps asphalt for the tennis court. The running track was cinders/crushed slag and if you fell and skinned your knees or elbows there was likely to be embedded bits of rock under your skin when it healed.
The playground area was circa 1956.
Dave Nelson
Playground? What's a playground?
maxman Playground? What's a playground?
I was going to say that all we had was a tire swing. But I can't because the wheel wasn't invented yet. ;)
50s and 60s in the New York suburbs. Our playgrounds we're mostly very well-worn grass. Swings and slides had dirt all around in elementary school, then high school transitioned to grass except where baseball/softball diamonds were. My high school and junior high were fortunate to have large, flat-as-a-pancake fields. That's an accident of geology, I suppose.
Our "hockey rink" was a couple of tennis courts they flooded using a garden hose for a few weeks in mid-winter.
I feel sorry for kids growing up in urban environments who only had hard-shell playground surfaces.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.