Haha, yeah I always say that us 80s kids were basically feral. We would travel out for miles on our own, and play in all kinds of dangerous places. And the playground was sadly one of them.
15 foot high monkey bars rusted out with broken weld joints hanging over solid concrete. It was a different time for sure. There were so many ways to die as an 80s kid, yet somehow we are fine.... for the most part!
One of the things that me and my friends would do is enter these gigantic drainage pipes and just wander on and on and on until we popped up through a manhole cover ages away from where we started. We were a different kind of fearless back then because that was definitely not a safe place to be.
you likely saw one of these death traps as a child. They were the best!
Oh my lord that thing is amazing. Haha! Of course I was the kid to climb up the outside of the structure just to make it a bit more dangerous.
I didn't realize other kids were doing this. Whenever I would find any kind of large pipe I would crawl into it. I would convince my little brother to follow me in and we'd end up up halfway across town sometimes popping up in surprising places. I guess we were the original Ninja Turtles hanging out in the sewers!
I remember when they started putting metal cages over the entrances and wondered why. I never considered that other kids were going in there. I never came across any. Maybe it was to stop me!