Med-O-Land

As a child, I romped a lot around the Lincoln Park playground (and, after, would stop for a popsicle or bag of shelled sunflower seeds at the nearby Lincoln Pharmacy) quite a bit. But I didn't notice this plaque - one of a matching pair - until a few years ago when I took a short cut through the park on the way home from work.

I remember Med-O-Land quite well, though I didn't know that's what it was called. Lots of bulbous metal shapes with round holes to be used as footholds for climbing or for peering out of like portals. Some looked like giant clam-shaped pods. There was definitely an outer space look to them, appropriate to the era, I suppose. And I'd actually forgotten Med-O-Land entirely until a 2006 visit to Seattle when I looked up at the Space Needle and something about its design suddenly made me recall the Lincoln Park playground of my childhood.

Med-O-Land has been replaced by modern, safer playground equipment which doesn't quite have the excitement of those holey blue metal shapes. And the Lincoln Park playground, in its various incarnations over the years, is actually Albany's first playground...according to yet another plaque nearby.