The "Living In A Better World Can Happen If You Help Make It Happen!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  July 2, 1944 and a group of neighbors in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania neighborhood decided to clear weeds from a vacant lot on North Broad Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  This was the beginning of a story that was featured in my local daily newspaper.  It was not written whether that vacant lot belonged to anyone or not.  Story just stated that the neighbors decided to clear the lot.  And...the reason to clear the lot was to build a neighborhood playground for the neighborhood children.  Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?  Try that today and see what happens.  Anyway...the project began when a group of five men, all neighbors, decided to clear weeds from the vacant lot.  Four years later, the plot had blossomed into a well-equipped playground.  The project began when five neighbors, all fathers of small children, worked together to clear weeds and junk from the vacant lot.  Once that work was done, they decided to turn the lot into a playground, built cooperatively by the neighbors, with material costs to be divided among the men based on how many children each man had.  They planted grass, shrubs and a shade tree.  They built a fire-pit from brick found on the property and poured concrete for a sandbox.  They bought food and made picnic tables and see-saws.  Each summer, one or two new items were added.  The project, which the men described as a "neighborhood cooperative," wasn't quite finished, since they wanted to build a sliding board in the summer of 1949.  My children, all three of them, would have loved to have had a chance to play on that playground when they were children.  And, to have their dad build everything would have made it more "special" to them.  Hey...I would have thought the same thing if that had been my dad.  But...who owned the lot?  Who was responsible for collecting the money to buy the items to build it?  Can you imagine a group of neighborhood fathers doing the same thing today?   If only people could work together as these gentlemen did in the 1940s.  Perhaps someday neighbors will get the same idea that these gentlemen did back in the 1940s and create a neighborhood playground for their children.  Wouldn't you love to read a similar story in your newspaper?  Maybe, just maybe, it could happen once again.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.