With the injury of the Davies’ boy our folks thought better of the spinning board that did such a great job of attracting preschool children. (see My Folks #24 – 29th St #8 – Our Playground 4 – Whirligig)

The first casualty was the rear transfer case that let the teeter totter transform into a much preferred whirligig. As I remember the gears in the transfer case got welded together and the same case was mounted in new concrete just to the west of the swings. We three kids pressed our handprints and my folks put their thumb print into the concrete securing the transfer case. A much taller metal pole than the whirligig had been built around was standing into the sky. 

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Tetherball was a new game to us but a some AI research tells me the sport traces back to 1880’s England where it was played with tennis rackets. Striking with the hands and heavier balls were added in the early 1900s. The game was standardized for parks and schools in the 1920s, which also saw the upright pole measuring 10 feet. 

The game is for two people standing on either side of the pole to hit the ball in opposite directions. The ball, tethered to the pole on a long cord, gets wound around the pole in opposing directions until the cord is completely wound tight in either direction. Winning the game means winding the ball in your direction until there is no more cord to wind. 

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Vicky was my older sister by two years and she was always much more athletic and I.  She mastered swinging that tethered ball high in the air so it passed out of reach over my head. It then swooped low on Vicky’s side of the pole so she could smack it with even more energy in a high arch over my frustrated hands. Vicky went on to use  her skills to dominate the tetherball poles at our grade school. 

My strategy soon became keeping that ball from swinging into high and low trips around the pole. 

That might have actually happened. Once.