Whatever happened to clotheslines and playgrounds?
Clotheslines were in every back yard when I was growing up. I can remember thinking our family had hit the big time when we changed from a folding aluminum clothes tree with vinyl cording to a series of metal posts in the yard with cotton rope strung between them.
'Cause the latter offered SO much more to a kid. A metal clothes post could double as the anchor for a tether ball tournament - or a volley ball net could be strung between a pair of metal posts. And then there were the wooden support sticks used to keep the line from sagging that doubled as lances for imaginary knights of old.
The neighborhood playground has disappeared in favor of entertainment destinations - indoor gymnasiums with pizza and soft drinks. How is a kid supposed to get a respectable case of poison ivy playing inside a block building? And how are kids supposed to learn about the stomach cramps that come from sipping the water from the local stream?
Even more important- how are Mom's supposed to learn to deal with being traumatized by a group of neighborhood children running to announce that Jimmy just fell from the highest bar on the jungle gym?
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