Getting Kids Off the Street- And Up In The Air

"THE scene is your city on a sticky, sweltering twilight in midsummer. Lights are beginning to wink on and kids are starting to gather in the streets after the evening meal.

A few years ago this was the danger hour in your city. You remember it well—the nightly muggings would begin about now and young girls would be afraid to venture out alone. Beatings were commonplace and gang wars, fiercely fought with knives and zip-guns, were a frequent occurrence. But things are different now.

Look at the kids emerging from their homes. Instead of congregating at the candy store and pool parlor hatching * up new forms of violence out of boredom, they are now heading for the center of the block. They funnel into a large entrance and are swallowed up inside.

Follow them. They tile into elevators and are whisked upstairs. The doors open and they step into a fantasy land.

There, a few yards from the tenements where they live, on their very roofs, in fact, is a regulation-size baseball diamond with real springy turf! But the kids aren’t interested just now—they played ball all afternoon. Instead, they enter the locker room and in a few minutes are cavorting noisily in a big, broad and very cool swimming pool. Afterwards, they troop onto the ball field, where chairs have been set up, and watch a movie under the stars.

What's it all about? 'This magic land for kids doesn't exist in my city,' you say. No, it doesn’t—yet!"