"Ticket Please!!"

When I was about 6 years old and Joanne was about 4, we lived in an apartment building. This was our apartment building...50 Carabob Court, Apt. 902...a corner unit. You can see it in the photo below...just count up nine floors from the left corner:

This was the floor plan...in case you were curious:Anyway...there was a playground downstairs. Joanne and I spent hours in that playground. Now mind you, playgrounds in the seventies were nothing like today. We had no sand, rubber or wood chips to cushion our fall from the iron/steel slides and monkey bars. Oh no my friends, we had CEMENT. There was also a crapload of lead in the paint they used to paint the equipment and there were sharp edges on all the slides. They were silver metal, so on sunny days, we got third degree burns going down those suckers and the merry-go-rounds were REAL merry-go-rounds where if you didn't puke after a ride, you were the BOMB!

One day, Joanne and I were playing with our friend, Margaret, who lived in the same building. Joanne, being the dominant one, was the ticket taker. You had to give her a ticket in order to go down the slide. On the third or fourth ride, Joanne decided that my ticket was not valid...who knows how her brain worked. I told her I wanted to go down the slide and she told me I couldn't because I didn't have a ticket. I tried to push past her and WHAMO! She pushed me off the top of the slide. I hit the pavement like a ton of bricks. I ended up witha sprained arm and two black eyes. Joanne and Margaret held their hands in an "X" and I sat on their arms as they ran into our building yelling, "EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!" I can't remember what happened after that or whether Joanne got into trouble for that, but what a memory...I`ll never forget that!