By John Kelly
Washington Post
Sept. 15, 2008

To the kids who played baseball on the Macomb Street playground back in the 1960s, the drop at the edge of far left field might as well have been the Grand Canyon. If the horsehide skittered past your glove and rolled down that ball-swallowing trench, it was a sure homerun for the other team.

But on Saturday afternoon, at a 40th (roughly) reunion of playground regulars, former child after former child came to the same conclusion. "It doesn't look so big now," said 52-year-old Wai Hom, who'd traveled all the way from Nashua, N.H., to reconnect with old friends.

For Wai and the dozens of other Macomb veterans, the Northwest D.C. playground was a skinned-knee utopia. It seems almost unimaginable today, when we won't let children out of our sight and every extracurricular activity is programmed down to the millisecond, but once upon a time, kids were kids. [More]

Make sure your kids have good playground memories - consider building or refurbishing a local playspace today.