Playgrounds From the 70's

When I was a kid in San Jose/Cupertino California in the late 60's early 70's, my mom made it her mission to take us to every city park she could find. Two really stand out: one with giant (well, they seemed giant at the time) dinosaurs made of painted concrete that you could climb on. I especially remember the red pterodactyl. The other was a water park, which featured a ring of water cannons that would turn on at scheduled times and blast water into the middle of a large concrete pad - slip and fall injury, anyone? There was also a castle type building that would also have water pouring from hidden jets. Not only did we have wet concrete, we had wet concrete *stairs*! How cool was that?

There was a Giganta model installed in Mundelein, IL when I was a kid. The top level was a filthy cesspool by the time my mother found the park and took us there (we lived abou 12 miles away, but Mundelein had two larger grocers, so we shopped there)--smells of urine, alcohol, vomit--I'm sure it was the playground of choice for the wild teen set. The model installed there reminded me of a nutcracker or tin soldier, so it might have been slightly different. The bottoms of the arms, however, had more of an upward scoop than the one in the photo, however. I came down really fast one time (stupid polyester trousers!), and, instead of landing with my feet on the ground, it threw me a couple of feet further into the air, and I landed squarely on my buttox and tailbone. A few weeks later, we learned I had crushed two vertebrae. We learned to stay off that slide and soon found another park.