Editor's Column

by Benjamin Tertin

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Kickin' it Old-School
Requires a Rope

My love affair with rope swings started at the Pine Woods campground in southeastern Wisconsin.

Dad lowered his finest rope from a pitch-soaked pine tree leaning over our campsite. He lifted me onto a custom wooden plank seat and sent me on a high-flying thrill ride.

The tiny back-and-forth playground swings paled in comparison to the long, breezy arcs of Dad's rope swing.

Back home in Burlington, Wis., I petitioned my father for sole ownership of that remarkable rope.

"No way," he said. "They don't make 'em like this anymore; this the strongest hemp rope in the world."

That sounded perfect for my intended applications, but no argument could persuade Dad to bless me with such treasure. Instead, he handed me a 50-foot, half-inch cotton rope. It wasn't the world's finest, but that rope became my most valued possession and the foundation of a rope swing obsession.

Mom and dad had passed a backyard law prohibiting the use of ladders to climb trees, and I was too little to shimmy up wide tree trunks. The unjust law restricted access to the yard's best climbing trees.

I had not yet learned of Gandhi but still embraced a concept of non-violent protest while I slipped Dad's ladder out of the barn and propped it against the big backyard elm tree.

I risked death and punishment to hang that swing above the sloped earth below. Imagining only the altitude I could achieve on the up-swing over a downward slope, I did not realize that the rope's placement would give parental investigators solid evidence proving that I had, in fact, used the ladder.

That first successful swing made 525 W. Chesnut St.'s backyard famous, and although I did get severely grounded, the rope stayed up. Nobody wanted to climb back up to untie it, and Dad was not the type to cut a good rope.

Neighborhood kids lined up for their turns. The less fortunate kids Ðthe ones born to overly protective mothersÐonly watched. Inevitably, when the poor souls' curiosity trumped parental instruction, they swung the forbidden swing and injured themselves.

At age 10, I bid farewell to the old elm tree, and our family moved south to Bolivar, Tenn. My new neighborhood peers shunned me for being born in the North.

Only my next-door neighbor, Dan, considered me a real person, and the two of us built forts, constructed pecan-hurling armaments and devised major thrill rides. Dan and I positioned our first swing rope so we could leap off a second-story deck to soar over a rugged gorge.

Dad was reading a newspaper in the second-story dining room when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught me mocking gravity from a familiar wooden plank seat. He feared my potential demise. After his "test-for-safety" ride and a back injury, he and Mom convened in the judiciary chambers, and the parental court condemned the swing.

With the woods' best tree out of commission, swing designs evolved.

Curiosity slowly motivated neighborhood kids to let down their Yankee-hating prejudices and start requesting rides on the latest zip-cords and contraptions they witnessed carrying me through the yard's unused airspace.

I formed an alliance with the rich neighbor kid, Brett, because he had a four wheeler, and I needed gas-powered momentum to launch my most advanced innovation to date. It was so advanced, in fact, that I was afraid to take the first ride.

Josh Hoffman wasn't afraid, though. Hoffman had been one of my harshest mockers, but his willingness to help my cause dissolved previous tension between us.

Two ropes, one hanging straight down and one stretched across the ground, formed a 90-degree angle; an old car tire inner tube hung from their connecting knot. With the loose end attached to Brett's ATV, I told Hoffman to put his arms through the tube and dangle his feet.

Brett hit the gas. The loose 90-degree angle popped up to banjo-string tight, shooting Hoffman high over the yard toward a sweet gum tree. His limp body hammered the trunk, thumped through the branches and crumpled on the dirt.

He survived the trial run with a broken leg, and understanding the implications of this mishap, I started looking for a new tree.

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