I think the one above was taken somewhere else. It was warm enough for him to be outside but for some reason I don't think it was taken at State Street.
I didn't take this at night so I don't know what all the darkness is from. He's always liked flowers but it would not be like him to pick them today. As a kid they were wonders to him.
I don't know where these were taken. I know its while we lived at State Street, but we didn't have swings. Maybe its down at that park that was way down the road from us.
It would explain the lack of sunlight. There were a lot of shade trees there. As you face this photo, your back would be to the civil war cannons up on the hill behind and behind the cannons would be the cemetery with that nasty fruit tree.
I liked this playground. I took him there a lot even when we lived on Mill Street.
I remember taking him there after a big rain storm. There were tennis courts there. They were paved and painted a light blue. They were also sort of sealed by the paint maybe because the water stayed in them for a time. I was about four or five inches deep. He had a great time playing in it.
There was also teeter totters and the wheel thing that you sit on and someone pushes it around to make it spin. It can be real dangerous but we would put him on it and push him a little but not real fast like the older kids did.
I think the ones after this are another play ground much farther away where Janice had a family picnic at one time. I forget all the names.
This was a badly constructed playground. I took Tommy down here by myself when he was a couple of years older. We were living in the Mill Street house by then. He was climbing on that thing you see off to the left. You go up those steel bars and then "climb" by swinging yourself from one bar to the next across to the other side and then climb back down. He could do it really well. I think he was about six. He fell on one try and landed in the stones on the bottom. He didn't cry. He didn't pass out, but I thought it was time to go home.
On the way home he fell asleep in the seat beside me. I got scared. I thought maybe he'd hit his head and I didn't know about it. I turned the car around and headed back beyond the playground to the hospital ER. I think it was called Brown Memorial. They checked him out and he was fine.
Then they got me off in an office area somewhere and gave me hell cause he was dirty. We had just came from the playground where he'd been playing in dirt. Of course he still had dirt on him. I would normally given him a bath when I got him home. I was embarrassed and angry that they would complain about this.
Now I know that they probably saw a lot of nasty neglected children and maybe, just maybe they were trying to protect them. Tommy was a normal kid. He played in the dirt and he got dirty. He also enjoyed his bath time and got a bath every day. He wasn't neglected.
The playground was constructed by volunteers, burying old stuff and then leveling the field off and pouring about four or five inches of pea sized rounded gravel on top. It would have been fine if they had not dumped all stuff there in the first place. I noticed one day that the kids were digging up big rusty railroad spikes. I thought maybe that was a once in a life time thing but after this happened I was more careful.
I showed it to Tom when he was along with us. He dug down about six inches and found them in piles. I seldom let him on that playground again.