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| - The park of my youth. I went to preschool here, back then, nursery school. It was where I was separated from my mother the first day of school. Where I chased after here because I thought she'd stay with me. It was where I made my first friend. Hit my first pitched ball in little league, played high school baseball and football. My first over the fence homerun was hit hear at Olympia Field, right down the left field line, 305 feet away from home plate. I felt like Bill Mazeroski rounding the bases.
This park has been around since the early part of the twentieth century. I have no idea how I survived playing at this park everyday. Today when I look down at the playground, all the equipment is made from plastic and they even put down rubber matting on the ground in case the kids fall. On the other hand I played on stainless steel sliding boards, climbed on steel monkey bars, we had a plate steel merry go round with and God helped you if you got hit with one of the handles as it went by. If you fell off the equipment you landed on concrete. I can't tell you how many skinned knees, stoved fingers, cuts, scraps, abrasions, and contusions I came home with. It was the place I spent my summers as a kid, my spring and fall months playing baseball and football for St Mary of the Mount High School. This is also where I voted for the very first time! Who forgets that? The first time you vote, you want to shout it out to the world!
There used to be a pool where the baseball field is now. And what park would complete without it's own urban legend? Olympia Park had the "Chicken Man" who was a farmer behind the right field fence down in a gully. Rumor had it he hated kids and would send his dogs after you if you got close to his house. Of course there wasn't a chicken man, as later when I was older I took a hike back there, and was so disappointed that there wasn't even a house down there.... just trees.
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