The Plantation News
The Swing
by Jimmy Allen
Part I
Dad Puts Up The Swing
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The Tall Oak Tree
The arrow shows
where the swing was tied.
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 Like every
good dad should, Dad took me shopping to the Sears Department Store Hardware
Section. Here were aisles and aisles of hammers and saws, drills and power
tools, screws and hinges of every size, and mystical moments of bonding
between a six year old boy and his dad. This time Dad bought rope.
Without telling anyone what he was up to, Dad brought home 100 feet
of three-quarter inch, six hundred pound rated hemp rope, and a couple smaller
hanks of nylon clothesline cord. The rope smelled like dusty, dry burlap;
and it felt prickly holding the heavy coils in my arms. Dad wandered back
and forth around the backyard, gazing up at the sky, and kept returning to
one spot, below an immense oak tree along the northwest border of the back
yard. This oak tree was so tall that, even though it grew way down the hill
in the back yard, its upper branches and crown could be seen from the front
yard, towering over our roof. Dad stood staring up for the longest time, and
finally announced, "We're going to put up a swing."
"A swing! A swing!" I yelled as I raced around the back yard,
unwinding the hemp rope into a long brown snake in the grass. "We're going
to have a swing!" Little did I know how hard this project would turn out to
be. Dad pointed out the limb he had in mind, the first big branch of the tall
oak tree, so high up you had to squint to see it clearly. Even I knew that
climbing up that high was extremely dangerous, and out of the question.
Dad uncoiled the smaller hanks of clothesline cord and tied them all
end to end, so instead of three shorter snakes, we had one very long
cord-cord-rope snake. Dad found a brick with holes in it, left over from
the building of our house, and tied the brick to the end of the clothesline
cord. He gathered several big coils by his feet, and began swinging the brick
around like a windmill, slowly at first, then faster and faster and faster.
Suddenly, he let go, and the brick sailed into the air, whipping the cord up
behind it. The cord traced in the air the beautiful parabolic arc of the brick's
path through space. Unfortunately, the apogee of the arc was only about one
third of the way up to the high branch. The brick thudded to the ground,
bounced, and rolled down the hill, trailing the limp rope behind it.
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The Tall Oak Tree
The arrow shows the height to the branch.
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Dad dragged the brick back to himself while recoiling the rope. He
stared up at the branch for a long time, recalculating. Finally, he repositioned
himself further uphill, but also further from the base of the tree, and ordered
me to stand way, way back. Again, he spun the brick around, even faster this
time. He looked like a helicopter turned sideways, and you couldn't see the
rope except for a blur. Dad let go, and again the brick sailed upward and
outward towards the high branch. The whole first hank of clothesline cord
went by, picked up the knot, and the second hank of clothesline cord began
leaping into the air. Alas, between the weight of the rope and the forces
of gravity and friction, the brick's trajectory peaked below the optimum height.
About halfway up to the high branch, the brick turned. It plummeted down with
a heavier thud, and rolled even farther down the hill than last time, dragging
the limp rope behind it. Dad sat down on the hillside, staring up at the high
branch, and perhaps contemplated the idiocy of climbing the tall oak tree.
Suddenly, Dad had an idea, and he went uphill to the house, upstairs,
and up into the attic. He bumped around up there for a while, and finally came
down from the attic with his ancient lemonwood bow, and our one arrow. He snuck
into Mom's sewing kit, and stole a big spool of white thread. He looked into the
kitchen junk drawer, and grabbed the kite string, and walked outside to stand
below the oak tree again. He untied the brick and threw it into the woods.
He tied the kite string to the clothesline cord, and unwound all of the kite
string into big, neat coils by his feet. He unwound all of the thread across
the yard and down the hill, walked back with the end, thus doubling the thread,
and tied the thread to the kite string. The thread-string-cord-cord-rope snake
was now five parts long, and Dad tied the very end of the thread to the nock of
the one arrow.
Dad's ancient lemonwood bow was a beautifully curved blonde piece of
wood, very slim and attractive, about five feet tall. When new, it was rated
at sixty pounds of draw weight, which is very high for a wooden bow. Most people
can't draw the string of such a heavy bow without shaking. Most people can't
even string this bow, which requires that you step through the bow, grab it
behind you and bend its limb around your hip, sit back against it to give that
final heave, and slip the bowstring noose around its neck.
Our one arrow was shorter than normal because it had broken once. It
had a newly whittled tip, but had only one feather left. Nevertheless, Dad
strung the ancient lemonwood bow, nocked his short arrow, with its
thread-string-cord-cord-rope snake tied behind it, drew back and shot the
arrow into the sky. The one-feathered arrow rocketed upward, sailed over the
branch of the tall oak tree and flew out of sight. The thread went up quickly,
and the kite string started aloft, but... but then the thread broke. The kite
string slumped to the ground. Our one arrow, unencumbered by the weight of its
drag line, whistled away and landed somewhere down in the darkened woods, lost.
Dad unstrung the bow, gathered the string and remaining thread into coils
at his feet, and then we walked in a straight line down the arrow's flight path,
into the woods. After about ten minutes Dad had picked up the thread, and we
followed the thread through the tree branches and around the thickets to our one
arrow, stuck straight down into the ground.
Old one-feather retrieved, Dad restrung the bow, quadrupled the thread,
nocked the poorly fletched arrow, drew back the ancient lemonwood bow, and let
fly again. The arrow sailed over the branch, lofting the thread. The thread
sailed over the branch, and picked up the kite string. The kite string saiIed
over the branch, and picked up the clothesline cord. However, clothesline cord
is pretty heavy compared to kite string, and after a short moment, the clothesline
cord stopped going up. So, the kite string stopped going up. So, the thread
stopped going up. The arrow stopped in midair as the lines all went taut, and
then swept pendulum-like down towards the ground. Luckily, the kite string had
gone up and over the high branch, and now the arrow dangled by a thread, about
halfway up the trunk of the tall oak tree.
Not one to be thwarted after coming this far, Dad whipped sine/cosine
waves up the kite string, and the arrow dropped a foot at a time until he could
reach it. He pulled down the thread which pulled up the kite string. He pulled
down the kite string which pulled up the clothesline cords. He pulled down the
clothesline cords which pulled the hemp rope up and over the high branch of the
tall oak tree. He tied a knot at the bottom, and pulled the knot up the rope
until it cinched itself securely around the high branch. Finally, he tied a rope
triangle at the bottom, with a 2x4 seat, and we had made a swing.
A swing! A swing! We had made a swing! All of the boys loved swinging
in the swing, and all the neighborhood kids came by to swing, too. Ricky swang
in the swing before he was even born, because Mom couldn't resist flying out over
the hillside in our wonderful swing. Dad, a thirty-four year old boy inside, had
to tire us out before he got to swing on his wonderful creation, and decided it
was worth every ounce of the Herculean effort. A swing! A swing!
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