Written by Christopher Van Dyke –

The first swing I remember my father putting up was inside an old brick building he owned on the main street of the small town I grew up in.

If you took that building and split it up, the bottom front quarter of it, down by the street where the customers could walk in, was where he had his small jewelry store. If memory serves me correctly, this store was closed as much as it was open.

The rest of the building, the other full three quarters of it, my dad had gutted. He had torn down all the walls, ripped out the ceilings and cut holes in the floors, all so he could replace everything with catwalks and lofts. These he dangled from the rafters. It was hard to walk into this space as a child and not think, “Huge indoor treehouse.”

It’s sad in that after all this work my father would not own this building for very long. He would lose it in a fire sale within a couple of years for not paying his taxes. At the time though, it was one big playhouse.

My dad had hung a rope from an exposed beam in what served as his living room. My younger brother and I would grab the end of that rope, skirt around the catwalk and out onto the loft, take hold and leap. We would soar out over the coffee table, across the old beat up couch and stop within a foot or two of the massive, old second story windows that lined the front wall.

My brother and I thought this was fantastic, others, not so much.

I can remember talking to a gentleman years later who told me that late one night he had been crossing the street and happened to look up. He saw one of our tiny bodies hurtling back and forth toward those windows, back and forth, back and forth.

He had rushed over to stand below the windows and stood waiting to catch us. I got the impression that though he was not upset that we didn’t take a fall, he was disappointed that he didn’t get the opportunity to save us.

Fast forward 7 or 8 years. My dad has lost the old building and is now renting a small house about two blocks from downtown, living with his girlfriend and my then very young half brother and sister.

Dad always managed to have a good amount of free time. One day as he wandered about town he came across two men tearing out the old grain elevator from the mom and pop hardware store that happened to be right across the street from the building he used to own. There, lying at his feet was the granddaddy of all ropes. This thing was as thick around as his wrist. It was fibrous and tough but best of all it was very, very long.

Dad asked if he could have it, the men figured it was one less thing to deal with, so before long he was dragging this monster rope home.

None of us knew it but my dad had been eyeing up an old tree in his backyard that stood at the edge of a steep gully. He knew that tree was where this rope belonged. The only problem was that the lowest branch in the tree was the exact one my father wanted to dangle this rope from. Straight away he started collecting branches, cutting them to length and tying them to the trunk of that tree with a whole lot of baler twine. He was building a ladder.

As a short aside, there are two questions I never dared ask my father at the time.

One was, “Are you planning on making any money any time soon?”

The second, “If you have no money, where are you coming up with all this baler twine?”

My dad finished that utterly terrifying ladder, got the rope hung from that branch and we spent the first week gently swinging back and forth across that gully. Until one day he turned to me and said, “Let’s see what this rope can do?”

We immediately went out, found three saplings about 8 inches in diameter, cut them down, drug them to the edge of the gully, lashed the tops together and stood them up. It looked like a massive three sided teepee. Just like the loft in the old brick building, what we were doing is starting the construction of a platform to leap from.

It was not long, before what we still affectionately call “The Swing” became what my father did. It was his vocation. Constructed entirely from branches, sapling, and yes, lots and lots of rope, it did not take long for “The Swing” to grow not only in height but in sheer size.

Rungs were added to the front that went higher and higher, that we would climb up and then leap from. Another entire addition was attached to the back side where another swing was added so the little children would have a place to play. My father spent hours weaving a net that he draped over the side for people to climb. When it got wet, the entire structure would tighten up and feel so solid one could swear it was made of brick and mortar. When it got dry, it sagged and creaked as you climbed it. It felt alive.

The swing was visceral, intense, a bit scary and a touch dangerous. It was just like my dad.

At its peak, when you stood on top of it, one arm outstretched holding the rope, balancing on one foot, the other darting out to lace itself in the loop at the bottom of it, that rope left the branch of that tree, came down to cross an old telephone wire and then came back up to where you stood.

When you pushed off, the first ten feet was an utter freefall. Then the rope would catch you and snap you across the gully and sling you into the treetops on the other side.

I know it is such an overused analogy, but it was just like flying should feel.

Then something happened in early fall that changed everything. For whatever reason the municipality decided that it was time for a small copse of trees to come down that stood between the back yard where the swing was and the parking lot for the one grocery store in town.

It was as if the entire town of Troy Pennsylvania turned collectively at one time and said, “What in the hell is that thing?”

I could imagine someone wondering if it was just a big piece of modern art. Yet there were children swarming all over it. Teenagers, shirtless, leaping from the top, unkempt hair flying behind them.

We were having way too much fun.

My dad would never admit it but public pressure brought the swing down.

Not long after, I skipped school one day, my dad handed me one of two hatchets and we took to whacking at the baler twine until the swing was just a pile of rubble.

Much like my father, when exposed to the light of day, the swing did not withstand much pressure.

Here I am thirty years later, children of my own and, for better or worse, I am not my father.

I go to work every day. I am home for dinner every night. I feel no need to test the mettle of my sons.

I actively make decisions that put me just this side of boring.

I will tell you one thing though. Just between you and me…There is an old tree in my backyard I’ve been eyeing up.