{"id":281,"date":"2014-04-14T19:19:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T19:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/?p=281"},"modified":"2014-04-15T02:00:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T02:00:12","slug":"the-swing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/?p=281","title":{"rendered":"The Swing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our neighbor, Charlie was a HAM Radio operator and had an antenna in his back yard big enough to reach Mars.\u00a0 It went at least a mile straight up into the sky with an elaborate spiky structure on top.\u00a0 Kind of a cross between a huge aluminum snowflake and the letter \u201cH\u201d on the HOLLYWOOD sign. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Charlie was a mild-mannered nice guy; eccentric and quiet.\u00a0 He reminded me of TV\u2019s Mr. Wizard, the archetype of Popular Mechanics.\u00a0 He was brilliant and always tinkering. \u00a0Charlie\u2019s wife, Ruth, was the family alpha and also our Sunday school teacher. \u00a0He and his wife were active in local liberal politics.\u00a0 The only time I ever really interacted with Charlie was when I was on my paper route.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winters were long and sidewalks were icy for weeks at a time.\u00a0 Ruth always made Charlie keep the sidewalks clear.\u00a0 Charlie once had an idea, and broke up the perfectly good sidewalks in the front of his house.\u00a0 The new walks were designed with pipes running through them.\u00a0 His plan was to run the water from the household hot water heater through the cement, and back into the house.\u00a0 He would never again have to chip ice, or shovel snow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like all projects, it took a lot longer than planned.\u00a0 In Sunday school, Ruth was enthusiastic and told us about it. The cold weather finally came.\u00a0 Ice was everywhere but Charlie\u2019s sidewalk.\u00a0 We marveled.\u00a0 Ruth told us that it worked well but they had to turn up the heat on their electric water heater.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After a month or so, the ice was back on Charlie\u2019s sidewalk.\u00a0 Ruth avoided our questions in Sunday school.\u00a0 We were all curious.\u00a0 Late that spring, I had a chance to talk to Charlie.\u00a0 I grilled him about the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I was about 12, and my social barometer was not well developed.\u00a0 Charlie was avoiding the subject.\u00a0 He was flustered by my questions.\u00a0 Later, I heard it took Charlie a long time to pay off his electric bill for the month his sidewalk was operating.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Danny, my brother David\u2019s friend, lived next door to Charlie.\u00a0 David once mentioned that Danny had a cool \u201cTarzan\u201d swing on the hill next to his house.\u00a0 That got my attention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A steep, high hillside meandered for about three quarters of a mile through our neighborhood and was our playground.\u00a0 My Dad said it was actually a small earthquake fault.\u00a0 Halfway up the hill an irrigation ditch bisected the hill.\u00a0 The half of the hill, above the ditch, was steeper than the lower.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most of the hill was covered with brush that was about eight feet deep.\u00a0 The ground under the brush was a warren of tall grass \u201ctunnels\u201d where we had forts and played army.\u00a0 Scattered along the ditch were several big pine trees that were about 100 feet tall and about 350 yards apart.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Charlie and Danny lived at the base of the hill on the west end.\u00a0 Charlie\u2019s property was the only one in the neighborhood that included the part of the hill that adjoined his home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Located in the center of Charlie\u2019s part of the hill was his HAM antenna.\u00a0 The first big pine along the ditch was next to Danny\u2019s house.\u00a0 The \u201cTarzan\u201d swing hung from high in the pine to a strategic location above the ditch where, presumably, it was out of the reach of kids.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The swing was kinda weird.\u00a0 It consisted of about six feet of railroad rail hanging lengthwise from a cable that descended from the nether heights of the pine tree.\u00a0 A three foot piece of galvanized 2\u201d pipe, the perfect grip for our hands, rested above the rail with the cable running through it.\u00a0 Very heavy, expensive, and industrial for a kids swing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The swing was easily reached with a long stick and pulled to the uphill slope, where we could mount it.\u00a0 When launched, we flew high over the ditch, above Danny\u2019s apple tree and the roof of his house.\u00a0 The reverse brought you gently into the upper hillside.\u00a0 It was perfect;\u00a0 the lethal fall from the far half of the arc added just the right flavor to the experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We discovered an unusual feature.\u00a0 The more kids on the swing at one time, the better.\u00a0 The extra weight of more kids added a bouncy roller coaster quality to the ride.\u00a0 With four kids, you bounced ten to fifteen feet up and down as you rode the swing out and back.\u00a0 That bounce really made you to concentrate on your grip in the death zone.\u00a0 Whoever designed the swing did a hell of a job.\u00a0 Over the course of the summer the swing started to hang lower over the ditch and was easier to reach.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One day, when delivering papers, I saw Charlie up high working on his antenna.\u00a0 I stopped and visited as he worked.\u00a0 I had never seen anyone working that high off the ground.\u00a0 Much higher than the power poles in our neighborhood.\u00a0 Charlie said that the wind was pushing his antenna around so much lately that it was driving him crazy.\u00a0 His guy wires needed constant tuning \u201cto keep the damn thing from falling on my house.\u201d\u00a0 I started paying more attention to the antenna, particularly in the wind.\u00a0 It never seemed to move very much.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My last ride on the swing was a couple of days later.\u00a0 I launched off the hill and the cable parted where it went through the rail.\u00a0 The hole in the rail had been cut with a torch and was rough.\u00a0 It eroded the cable with every ride.\u00a0 I fell to the ground above, and slid down into, the ditch.\u00a0 I was incredibly lucky that the fall happened there.\u00a0 At the far end of the swing, I could have fallen 30 feet or more.\u00a0 I was also fortunate to have landed on the rail rather than the rail on me.\u00a0 It was so heavy it would have broken a lot of bones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Later, Charlie was working on his antenna.\u00a0 The top was leaning way off to one side.\u00a0 I asked him what happened.\u00a0 He was in the house and heard the antenna \u201cwhooshing\u201d from side to side.\u00a0 As he came out of the house it drooped over and stopped.\u00a0 He was afraid it might fall over.\u00a0 He was still working when I delivered his paper that afternoon; by then he had it figured out.\u00a0 The cable on his \u2018custom designed anti-sway damper\u2019 had broken.\u00a0 I asked him what was a damper and he pointed to the remnants of our Tarzan swing that he had fished out of the ditch.\u00a0 He speculated that the limbs of the pine tree had grown, and while swaying in the wind, they pushed on the damper cable so much it made the antenna sway excessively.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The swing was so far from the antenna that I had never made an association between the two.\u00a0 My blood ran cold as everything came into perspective.\u00a0 Each ride on the Tarzan swing whipped his antenna back and forth like the tachometer on a teenager’s car.\u00a0 It never occurred to Charlie that anyone might have been responsible for the events that had transpired.\u00a0 A few days later I noticed that the new counterweight was hung so high that it was truly beyond our considerable reach.\u00a0 There were also a lot more, and bigger, guy wires supporting the antenna.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Charlie being Charlie, never said anything.\u00a0 As I write I am not certain that he didn’t know the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our neighbor, Charlie was a HAM Radio operator and had an antenna in his back yard big enough to reach Mars.\u00a0 It went at least a mile straight up into the sky with an elaborate spiky structure on top.\u00a0 Kind of a cross between a huge aluminum snowflake and the letter \u201cH\u201d on the HOLLYWOOD […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}