Janelle illustrates the Pittsburg Crown Slide’s most alluring and dangerous feature, the “Suspended Bar of Broken Ankle Injuries.”
Thank you, Pittsburg!
New Hampshire’s northernmost town comes through with a Dangerous Playground Ride favorite; the Crown Slide. This deadly beauty was sometimes called the Platform Slide, or Fort Slide, named for the caged-in area at the top where children can sit, play and inevitably gets their heads stuck in the rusting bars.
Dan and Janelle tempt fate in the “crown” of the slide.
This slide has all the standard features: loose-fitting bolts ready to pop at any moment and send a child crashing to the ground, rusty hinges just looking for tetanus shot victims and the classic steel slide base that has burned many a young behind over the years.
But the Pittsburg slide is special. As Janelle immediately displayed, this masterpiece has an extra roll bar at the top of the stairs. It’s designed, one supposes, to give kids some needed balance when climbing up. But in reality, it’s easily and mostly used for hanging out over the steps and swinging in a potentially risky move I like to call the “Suspended Bar of Broken Ankle Injuries.”
Janelle illustrates the move in the picture above.
In the soft, plastic world that is playground slides today with their blunted edges and wood chip platforms, this slide is a true classic. It’s a lost relic of an era not too long removed when the playground truly was the final frontier.
For more Dangerous Playground Rides here’s a link to the Whirli-Gig of Terror
Do you know of any Dangerous Playground Rides in NH, or anywhere? Please let us know if your local park has an old school ride. We’ll come out there, give it a whirl, and when our bones knit, we’ll write about it!
Classic! I personally loved the Whirligig of Terror the most!
When Janelle was all of 4 years old, my mom & I took her and Aaron to this lake in NH and they had a playground with a slide that was about 12 feet high. Guess which little monkey climbed to the top and GRINNED and refused to slide down or climb down right away??? My mom kept muttering to me, “Your dad would have a heart attack if he was here, he’d never let her do that…” Janelle! Get down!” Well, she slid down, no problem. She’s always had a streak of daredevil in her.
Yes she has Beth, still does! She doesn’t hike up ledges or rocks, she attacks them!
There is another version of the whirligig type thing behind the Marion Gerrish community center in Derry, NH. Last time I was there was about a year ago but my kids loved it. A classic!
Nice April, thanks for the heads up. We’ll check it out!
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