When I was a lad, too young to play on public school teams, I would ride my bicycle to Cherry Park to play touch or tackle sandlot football with a gaggle of other free range kids in the shadow of a giant, cast fiberglass statue of Peter Pan, donated to the city by the Peter Pan Peanut Butter people — of whose logo the statue bore a striking resemblance.

Outfitted in worn blue jeans, U.S. Keds, and ragtag, egalitarian tees and sweatshirts, we played in the rain, snow, and sleet, in the mud or on drought hardened soil, it made no difference. The most important thing to us was that we were free to play by our own rules, independent of parental supervision. Adults were not welcomed, and truth be told, I’m not aware of any grownups having ever expressed disappointment that they weren’t included.

This photo essay, “The State of Play”, is less, however, about my burnishing memories of the past than about how the present is predelicted to transform and capitalize on those memories, about how, for example, ”organized youth sports” today have rendered extinct the sandlot sports I played as a kid.

Today, the fiberglass statue of the Peter Pan Peanut Butter logo at Cherry Park, and the pedestal upon which it sat, is gone; the statue was stolen in the 1970’s. A childish prank speculated authorities. Decades later the crime remains unsolved.

City fathers have since upscaled and modernized the park; perhaps, some might say, it’s too genteel and civilized now, to the degree that no Peter Pan worth his salt would lower themselves to lead a merry band of Lost Boys into a place labeled an “urban retreat” on Google Maps.

Not to mention, otherwise, that, in Peter Pan’s fantastical reality, there have always been more pressing matters for him to consider than wrestling with the more complex consequences of everyone else changing around him while he remains the same: Mortal entanglement in continuously looping battles with the most persistent and nefarious of his foes, springs to mind.

These adversaries would be us, as adults, of course. Or, speaking metaphorically: that arch summary caricature of us, Captain James Hook.

For long the two enemies looked at one another, author J.M. Barrie
wrote of their commencing, Hook shuddering slightly,
and Peter with the strange smile upon his face.
”So, Pan,’ said Hook at last, “this is all your doing.”
”Aye, James Hook,” came the stern answer, “it is all my
doing.”
”Proud and insolent youth,” said Hook, “prepare to
meet thy doom.”
”Dark and sinister man,” Peter answered, “have at thee.”

And have at one another they have managed to do, savagely, in one guise or another for generations – and will continue to do so, I imagine, ad infinitum. For as Barrie, also, reminds us, as he sets out on the telling of his story, “All of this has happened before,” he writes, “and it will all happen again.”