Peter A. & Leif - Giant Slide - Honolulu, Hawaii - Circa 1985 - Age 10

I think this photo was taken at the Hawaii State Fair but there's nothing written on the back to tell me for sure. We only went to the State Fair once. Like all kids, my sons loved carnival rides, giant slides, just about anything along those lines. When I was a kid we rarely got to do such things. There weren't any theme parks that I'd heard of except Disneyland and I didn't get there until I was 1973 when Peter A. was four-and-a-half and I was 34. Our mother didn't like to take us to traveling carnivals. They came to town occasionally and we kids would know they were there because they always had a giant searchlight that played through the sky over the town of Manhattan, Kansas. To us, that always appeared mysterious and beckoning, but we never got to go. We never went to the Kansas State Fair, either. Peter A. and Leif had a bit more luck getting to those kinds of attractions.

Leif on a Slide - Nurnberg Zoo - April 1978 - Age 3 and a half

Here's an example of fearless Leif on the playground, head first down the slide. He's not hanging on here to slow himself down. He's doing it so I can get the picture without him zooming by.

This playground was at the zoo in Nurnberg, Germany, where we lived from the summer of 1977 to the summer of 1978 in an American Army housing area that no longer exists. Peter W. was the Chief of the Nurnberg Law Center at that time, an interesting irony for a man that had been an immigrant from Germany in 1958 at the age of 15. He was a major in the Judge Advocate General's Corps at this time.

The Nurnberg Zoo was a great place to take the kids, a very nice park with many unusual animals, plus this playground. We could never pass a playground with Leif. HAD to stop! Likewise with those riding toys you used to have to stick a quarter in, though we didn't always supply the quarter.