Have just seen picture of my little friend Raimi frolicking in my second-favorite childhood playground. Chandler Park is a nice, relatively refined and elegant downtown histoircal park, with brick archway, iron fencing, and gazebo (which, incidentally, was once turned into a castle with cardboard ramparts by my madrigal troupe). But it also features abstract concrete playground sculptural pieces, full of little holes for hands and feet to grip to climb. In my family, they were called the pig, the pretzel, the camel, the castle, and the cheese. Anyone from Macomb will know which one is which. I have only seen these in one other park, in Ontario somewhere, although I will make no claim for them being unique to Macomb. They are gentle and amorphous and fun to slide on, always slightly dirty but never encouraging injuries.
Just so you know, the first-favorite childhood playground is Glenwood Park. The last time I visited Macomb, it still had a rocket ship slide, sevearl other slides of varying heights (my parents and I used to ride them with our dog Cricket when I was little), a merry-go-round, big stone picnic shelter, huge old trees, hills of the Macomb sort, a little unlit playhouse, lots of swings, and two tilted metal twirling dishes, which made me queasy after just a few turns and were more fun to put walnuts in and watch them tumble around.
