About once a week, my apartment is filled with the sounds of excited laughter, high-pitched squeals, and endless chatter. The explanation to an outsider would be simple – I live near a playground, right?
Wrong. Amidst the sea of identical two-family homes on my street in College Point, Queens, sits this drab, uninviting “park” – at least according to its name, Powell Cove Park. It holds no swings, no slides, no sandbox. Yet every week, there they are – 30 or so children, running carefree through the overgrown grass for no longer than a half an hour.
Normally, I would say “so be it.” It’s their parents’ problems when their kids come home covered in filth. But there’s my issue – only when the crowd disperses for the day have I ever seen an adult in the throng of what appear to be second-graders. So where do they come from? There’s no distinguishable pattern to what time or day they appear. The nearest elementary school is over ten blocks away, and it has its own playground for recess hours.
I would need to look out for when they next appear; then I could ask some questions to any adults that show up. This article could be in a publication like The Daily News, since they tend to publish small pieces about neighborhood issues.
Mary Iannone