Excerpt
The double slide in Oologah, Oklahoma, donated to the town park by the Kiwanis
Club, was a local landmark. For fifty years this slide, looking like two legs of
a spider, had provided fun for the children of Oologah. In 1995, however, a
child suffered minor injuries while playing unattended on the slide, and the
parents made a claim against the town. "I knew it was going then," said Judy
Ashwood, fifty-three, who herself had played on the slide as a child. "It's hard
for me to think that people who live here would actually sue the city if their
child fell off the slide." But the town board decided it had no choice,
notwithstanding a citizen petition asking that the slide remain in the park. It
auctioned off the slide to a resident of a nearby town, getting $326.50, and the
Oologah park slide was carted away.
All across America, playgrounds are being closed or stripped of standard
equipment. In 1997, Bristol, Connecticut, removed all of the seesaws and
merry-go-rounds from its playgrounds. When told of the decision, the face of
thirteen-year-old Jennifer Bartucca fell with disappointment. "Every time I come
here, I ask a friend to go on the seesaws. ... read full excerpt from: Lost Art of Drawing the Line ebook
