Today, parents love to worry about how hard it is to keep little Oliver and Ivy safe from every possible danger. But today’s plastic-wrapped, rubber-padded playgrounds have nothing on the hazardous adventures in injury that past generations endured on the 70s death traps laughingly called “play equipment.”

Make no mistake, the playgrounds of the 70s were forged in the hellfire of good old-fashioned childhood Darwinism. Those who survived have the scars, scrapes and gruesome stories to prove it. So as we obsess over sanitising and checking every surface, let us pay tribute to the toughened, tetanus-immune tykes who braved splintered seesaws, bolted merry-go-rounds, and hot metal slides lovingly heated by the sun to flesh-searing temperatures.

The Time Before Health and Safety Ruined Our Fun

The trouble all started in the 1970s when pesky health and safety advocates began sticking their noses into matters that did not concern them, like ensuring public playgrounds would not lead to maiming or accidental death. In their naivety, they failed to understand that the most memorable childhood fun comes from a dash of mortal peril.

Before these bothersome regulations, swings were often suspended from ropes that could snap without warning, sending little Michael on an exhilarating impromptu flight. Seesaws optimally placed atop concrete guaranteed that losing your balance resulted in at least a mild concussion. Those dizzying roundabouts did not stop rotating until enough kids either willingly flailed off or were centrifugally forced into the gravel.

In this halcyon age, unsupervised urchins were free to figure out the physics of human flight through trial and grievous error. They dangled upside-down on monkey bars situated over hard-packed earth until their tiny hands couldn’t hold on any longer. Then gravity would provide a speedy descent education about why it’s unwise to fall on one’s head from a great height.

The Terrifying Metal Slides of Torment

For us survivors of the 1970s state-funded education system, summer holidays brought the mixed joys and dangers of the dreaded local park. Here, rickety swings and a giant swing boat contraption towered menacingly over patches of broken glass sprinkled into the pot-holed tarmac. But nothing struck fear into the hearts of children quite like the sinister metal slides.

Under the blazing sun, the metal slides sizzled at skin-searing temperatures capable of melting the rubber off the soles of your cheap trainers. Tiny hands stuck to the rails would peel off in a macabre imitation of a breaded goujon. The wise child learned to descend as quickly as possible before their flesh began adhering to the metal. The unwise child ended their slide with an ungodly sizzling sound, followed by the permanent loss of many layers of dermis.

The speedy descent was terrifying enough without the threat of third-degree burns. The slide dropped at a perilously steep angle, guaranteed to propel tiny toddlers airborne if they lost control. Many an ill-fated child launched off the end, surely wondering during their brief, graceful arc why the hard ground was rapidly approaching.

After experiencing this thrilling preview of human flight, the lucky child dusted themselves off and limped away with merely some artistic scars. The unlucky ones left with a broken collarbone as a reminder to choose the seesaw next time.

The Liberties of Latchkey Living

In the days before overbearing helicopter parenting, 70s kids grew up feral and free-range. Our hard-working parents did their best by sometimes providing half a sandwich in a grease-stained paper bag before sending us off to fend for ourselves.

“Go on then, bugger off out of it,” they would say affectionately, before warning, “And if I catch you back here before nightfall, there’ll be hell to pay.” Off we would scamper to create backyard empires and squeeze in some unsupervised street football before sundown. Teachers, neighbours and random dog-walking strangers all pitched in with disciplinary beatings as needed.

On warm evenings, bedtime often involved one lovingly aimed warning shot from dad followed by hours of blissful freedom to build character and memories. We would wander the streets playing games like “That Dog Looks Friendly” and seeing who could climb over the locked school gates without severing an artery on the jagged spikes atop them.

I Envied Friends Allowed to Play on Active Railway Lines

Kids these days will never understand the unfettered freedom of being shooed outdoors to “play in the traffic” or clamber along active railway lines. My parents drew the line at actually permitting such delightful activities. I, of course, never did as I always listened to my parents! But many of my pals were lucky enough to have more devil-may-care attitudes from their own exhausted guardians. They would often come home in the evening vibrating with joy after spending all day playing on the unused (but still electrically active) underground rails near our houses.

Building fox-holes into the embankments was a favoured past-time during long summer holidays, the challenge being to dig the deepest and hopefully not have it collapse on you. This was, of course, before tank-trap jumping! We were blessed with having some WW2 tank traps along our nearest railway embankment and the sheer thrill of sprinting across the tops praying you wouldn’t miss a jump and mangle your shin was one of the favoured summer holiday activities.

And of course when using the playground equipment had become enough, a good twenty-a-side football match, was character building and good enough to make sure you went home as the lights came on.

Playgrounds Where Survival Trumped Supervision

Finally, nothing encapsulates the trill of danger more than parks devoid of parental interference. With exhausted mothers at home preparing dinner and fathers clocked in for overtime, we kids united in the anarchic, lord-of-the-flies existence that defined the community playground experience.

A typical scene involved dozens of unsupervised children packed onto a creaking merry-go-round. As the spinning picked up speed, the weak and infirm were flung off into the bushes while the strong gripped tighter. Last one still clinging to the death trap earned temporary playground bragging rights until more challengers arrived.

The absence of meddling parents allowed us to learn about concepts like pack mentality and ruthless survival instincts hands-on.

While waiting for the merry-go-round to stop spinning, we practiced dangerous stunts like seeing who could hang upside down from the top monkey bars the longest without plunging headfirst into the concrete below. Near-death experiences certainly taught us to appreciate our brief, fragile existences.

I credit the scar on my elbow and recurring tetanus shot needs to the fact that no one hovered over me, critiquing my risky playground choices or implying that I required protective padding when execution-style firing bangers at my friends.

A Walk Down Memory Swing Sets

Yes, today’s children will never understand what it felt like for us 70s kids to drag our battered bodies home as the sun set, bruised and bleeding but utterly content after a day of freedom. We did not realise how good we had it in the cutthroat, thrilling world of “Only the strong survive” playground antics.

But if you look carefully at the aging playground equipment, you can still make out the ghostly forms of past generations blowing off steam the old-fashioned way – through risks that built grit along with great anecdotes. Those who survived the playgrounds of the 70s still bear the scars and the stories.

Luckily both fade over time, unlike our fond memories of childhoods that did not coddle but instead prepared us for this cold, hard, deeply unsafe world in the most wonderfully reckless way.