I first played in this park and used its pool as a four-year-old in the early 1970s, and pretty much owned it as an adolescent and teenager into the mid-80s. I recall when the two tall light standards were first installed in the late 70s, and there were more bois d'arc trees on the Skillman side for climbing. Those trees slowly sank and died, as bois d'arcs do, and the light poles have rusted a good deal.
When I was a kid, the playground was much larger, on a rough-surfaced, pink pavement that offered many a scraped knee or elbow. It included a tall galvanized-steel slide, wooden/metal merry-go-round, two 2x10 plank seesaws, a metal jungle jym, and a set of 4-6 heavy wooden swings on metal chains. One could swing high enough to kick the branches in the overhead live oaks. The pool had two diving boards on the north side: a 1-meter "wimps" board, and a 3-meter diver from which I nailed can-openers and soaked the teenybopper lifeguards numerous times. All those amentities are gone, thanks to the era of CYA lawsuits and nanny-state overprotectiveness. Despite ourselves and those horrible "hazards", none of us ever got seriously injured.
The all-plastic playground that has occupied the north side of the grass field isn't the sheer adventure of the old one, but is adequate for an hour or so of play before the kids get bored. The pool is a big splash-pool now, with the boards gone. Last I checked, the concession stand still was closed also; it used to serve surprisingly good burgers and, of course, sno-cones. The circumnavigational joggign trail was installed in the early '80s and still is in very good shape, thanks to needful patching and quality pavement.
I live a few hours out of town, but still go there every chance I get when visiting Dallas, mainly for nostalgia's sake. I took my kids there to play when they were young enough, and they now have good memories of it too.
It's a quiet park now, and has changed for the better in one respect--it actually is safer now than it was in the 1970s to early 80s, before the neighborhood around it gentrified and got too expensive for the low-renters (including us, at the time). That cultural shift also drove out the gangbanger and dope-dealer crowd that sometiems stalked the place in the early '80s. Some friends and I spilled a good deal of blood in that park on fights with some of the dope-pusher element, but I won all mine...hey, it was my turf, not theirs! :-)
When you go, walk over to the wide sidewalk that runs SE from the corner of Skillman and Goodwin, and passes between the tennis court and softball field. Look down to see a faint, wavy bicycle track in the pavement. I put it there in 1982, when the sidewalk was laid. The sandstone "echo chamber" next to the new playground is a good place to have a birthday party, hide from storms, or make out after dark. And don't forget to stroll over to the huge concrete drain and cage in the southeast corner of the park, and yell into the drainage tunnel. It will echo for several seconds. Wherever that tunnel goes, it's a long one. read more