It's Back to School time (... and there will be special posts all "week" ... and more -- including a month of Mondays where I memorialize school like it used to be when I was young, and walked uphill to it, both ways, in the snow, barefoot and pregnant ... well, just barefoot ...)
When I was home earlier this summer, I snapped this photo in the playground behind Jonestown Elementary School (where I attended through 4th grade). I was looking for the giant mausoleum style graveyard slab which used to be our base when we played tag, and our ship when we played pirates, and anything else that it used to represent in our imagination while we were oblivious to the fact that there were bodies buried underneath it.
Apparently, it got too macabre to have kids play in a graveyard, and many of the tombstones (and, presumably, the bodies, were removed) -- although you can zoom in and catch one that is still on site under the second tree from the front. And, yes, I did warn the people in the background why it was that, as a middle aged man, I was taking pictures of kids at play on a school playground -- turned out I went to school with the guy on the bench who took his kids to the park that day.
One of the many reasons I might be a little twisted (i.e. my schoolyard playground was littered with tombstones), you, as an experience that fueled my imagination, are missed!
DEAD BODIES ARE A PART OF SCHOOL IN KNOXVILLE TN AS WELL:
http://tnjn.com/2007/mar/26/knoxvilles-past-uncovered-in-s/
MY AFOREMENTIONED ELEMENTARY ALMA MATER:
http://www.norleb.k12.pa.us/Domain/132
OTHER ODD PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT:
http://www.chicagonow.com/cheaper-than-therapy/2010/11/strange-play-26-odd-pieces-of-playground-equipment/#
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