Built to last

Well, the kid goes back to school tomorrow, and I figured I should make the first day of the New Year kind of special for him, so I drove him down to Santa Clara, where I used to live when I was a kid.

I was amazed to see that a lot of the infrastructure from my day is still there. Well the big ditch that the Army Corps of Engineers tore through the middle of town where the creek used to be, I wasn't so surprised to see that, although it does look a lot cleaner than what I remember. Not a rusty muffler or discarded refrigerator to be seen.

But the playground equipment. That really surprised me. There's this one jungle gym that I swear was there in my day that looks like something that got knocked loose off of Rommel's Atlantic wall in the Battle of Normandy.

And these concrete walls that I could never figure out why there were concrete walls surrounding the playground, except that maybe the grown-ups figured that would toughen you up if you rammed your trike full speed into a concrete wall a few times.

And the picnic tables are still there. No, I don't mean wooden picnic tables like you might use when you go camping. I'm talking steel-reinforced concrete.

We were tougher people in those days I guess. We figured if the Russians were gonna drop the bomb on us, that wasn't gonna slow us down as far as the playground was concerned.

Kurt "big daddy" True
1 january 2008