GUAGUA'S PREWAR ROCKET REPLICA SLIDE

   PREWAR ROCKET REPLICA       from the Guagua Central Elementary School Playground.  By: Dr. Norman Songco Among the many memories I carry from childhood, one remains especially vivid—the “PREWAR ROCKET REPLICA SLIDE” (please refer to the illustration below) that once stood in the playground of Guagua Central Elementary School . Established in 1901 as Guagua’s First Town School, the school occupies a special place in the history of Guagua, Pampanga. Although I was not a student there, its playground became a familiar part of my childhood. Many of my weekends were spent there, surrounded by the laughter and excitement of children at play. At the time, I saw the rocket slide simply as a fascinating playground attraction; only much later did I come to appreciate it as a small but memorable fragment of the town’s past. What makes this memory especially meaningful to me today is that the playground was more than a place where children gathered to pla...