Collectors Weekly:

For children, playgrounds are where magic happens. And if you count yourself among Baby Boomers or Gen Xers, you probably have fond memories of high steel jungle gyms and even higher metal slides that squeaked and groaned as you slid down them.

When you dismounted from a teeter-totter, you had to be careful not to send your partner crashing to the ground or get hit in the head by your own seat. The tougher, faster kids always pushed the brightly colored merry-go-round, trying to make riders as dizzy as possible. In the same way, you’d dare your sibling or best friend to push you even higher on the swing so your toes could touch the sky.

Today, these objects of happy summers past have nearly disappeared, replaced by newer equipment that’s lower to the ground and made of plastic, painted metal, and sometimes rot-resistant woods like cedar or redwood.

This is a fascinating article about the history of the playgrounds many of us horsed around on as kids. We think of them with nostalgia but, if we’re honest with ourselves, some of that equipment was incredibly dangerous. We had metal slides that, in the heat of the summer, could cause significant burns. And who doesn’t remember being spun off (or doing the spinning off) the Merry Go Round? And how many kids fell from the top of the Monkey Bars, hitting every steel bar on the way down, knocking out multiple teeth?