Just before last week’s July, 2011 heat wave drove us Danville, Illinois folks to the inside comfort of air conditioning, my kids and I, ages 10 & 5, ( I being considerably older than them …will keep my age out of the story)…anyway we took an early evening stroll from our home in the 1600 block of N. Gilbert Street for the half mile walk to the Edison Grade School playground. I, of course, being a good and responsible parent, kept both kids within arm’s reach at all times, least some pervert hiding behind a hedge row might reach out and molest one of them. When we crossed the busy intersection of Vermilion & Winter Streets, I responsibly pressed “the button” that would grant us safe passage across Vermillion Street between the painted crosswalks. (There is a lighted digital sign visible that counts down the 30 seconds that we are allowed to be within this crosswalk.) With both of my children’s hands safely nestled in mine, we crossed Vermilion street… a distance we covered with 15 seconds to spare! I then pressed “the button” that would allow us safe passage across Winter Street and access to the Edison School playground. We took our usual rout to the playground equipment to the rear of the school across the back parking lot, but found that all the gates to the playground have been padlocked shut for the summer months.
I knew that the fence that surrounded most of the playground had not been entirely enclosed yet, and that the side facing Vermilion Street still had free access to the playground . So we took the detour across the front side of Edison, and receive passage to the school playground. We were the only ones present using the playground equipment. My 5 year old son hopped on a swing and started swinging, while his older sister took to the bars and started to practice her gymnastic routines’. Being an old fellow, I sat down on the bench that was there for old people to rest while they watched their children or grandchildren play.
As I sat there watching my young ones play, I couldn’t help but notice how the playground had changed from my youth at Edison. The new swing sets were in the same locations, but not as tall and with a much shorter swing span. Gone was the 15 foot tall slick metal slide as well as the” Jungle Gym” where I could still see the concreted patches where it was once located. Also gone were the ‘monkey bars” where my buddy Bob Jones fell off in third grade, breaking one of his arms.
Within ten minutes of our arrival at the Edison Playground, I noticed a very rare occurrence for the year 2011...There were four boys between the ages of ten and twelve years,riding their bicycles up Jackson Street and crossing that street IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLOCK….a place where there was no marked crosswalk! On top of that they did this deed WITHOUT ANY ADULT SUPERVISION! They entered the Edison Playground between the fence and a hedgerow….clearly an unauthorized area of entry. After crossing the otherwise unchanged Edison softball diamond of the Edison School of my youth,they left their unattended bikes on the ground while they participated in an unsupervised game of wiffle ball.
What type of neglectful parent would allow this sort of behavior in 2011? I almost dialed 911 on my cell phone to report this bridge of parental neglect. Not one of these boys wore the required biking head helmets, or the recommended knee and elbow pads, and there was not a single parent accompanying them to insure their safety. I wondered if their parents even knew where their kids were. Those boys were indeed 21st century rebels’!!!.
But then I came to my senses and thought back to my youth. This scene was a common occurrence when I was their age. My generation didn’t have 24/7 parental supervision. We didn’t wear bike helmets, knee or elbow pads, let alone seat-belts in cars… and we actually rode in the back of pick-up trucks…how did we ever survive those years? One would think that the death toll from those years would have been staggering! But somehow 99.9999999% of my generation survived their youth.
Back in the summer of my tenth year I was out the door by 8 AM. Most the kids of my neighborhood played and biked in a field on the banks of Stony Creek. There must have been 15 to 20 of us on any given day ranging in age from 4 or 5 to 12 & 13.
There was once a tree that grew on a hill that overlooked our play field. During one thunderstorm that tree fell across our field… its’ top branches crashed in a knee deep pond (that was always filled with toads) This fallen tree became the center of our activities for summers to come. The tree’s roots were high enough on the hill where the massive trunk of the tree was six foot above the ground level, room enough where we could race our bikes right under the fallen tree. The kids of my neighborhood would climb the hill and then hop on the trunk and walk out over our field to the center of the pond climbing out on the branches that spread in every direction. The massive crater that was left in the hill side where the tree once stood became a new play area where many a battle between the "green plastic army men" was fought.
About noon, the moms of the neighborhood started to yell-out, blow whistles or ring dinner bells to tell their kids it was time for lunch. For about a half an hour the field would clear out as everyone returned home for lunch….but we were soon back at play…many of us staying out until the lightning bugs came out.
That was fifty years ago. I took my kids there for a hike one afternoon. I was interested to see if any of that tree was still there. Alas, Mother Nature had taken whatever was left of that tree and returned it to the earth. Our play field had also returned to nature. What once was a treeless meadow was now a thick forest of trees and brush. Clearly no kids played there no longer. Well of course they don’t ….what sort of responsible parent would let their 21st century kids free to roam the wilds of Stony Creek?
But back to those four boys on their bikes. Think about it….how often do you see kids out riding their bikes any longer? To me it was a rare and nostalgic moment, A moment rare enough to take the time to take out my cell phone, I snapped the (above) photo of the four boys playing ball with their unattended bikes…To me it was a nostalgic image, but to the boys playing ball I heard one of them shout out a warning to the others, “Hey there’s an old guy taking pictures of our bikes….let’s get out of here!!!”
