Legacy of a Swing Set

I love these two photos of Darcy! This was at her Aunt Jan and Uncle Eric's house in Willard. In the one photo she is swinging and in the other photo she is perched at the bottom of the slide. This is a HUGE swing set (with a much taller slide than you would ever find in a park in these days of caution and safety!) and with a large teeter totter attached. The swingset was one that Darcy's Grandpa played on in the school yard when he was a kid. (He is 82 years old now.) When Darcy's grandfather was himself a young parent, the school yard equipment was sold and he bought the huge metal swing set and put it up in his backyard for his own children! When the family moved, they took the huge swingset apart and moved it with them to their home out in the country in Peculiar. My children grew up playing on that swingset the nine years we lived next door to their grandparents...in the midst of 40 acres of woods. After we moved to Bolivar, Darcy's Aunt and Uncle who moved up to nearby Willard from Texas soon after we moved to Bolivar moved the swing set to their own place in the country (where Darcy's grandparents live part time--dividing their time between Willard and their home in Peculiar).

Lots of memories revolve around that ancient, loomingly large swing set! My oldest sister-in-law can remember her eventual husband getting in trouble for sneaking into her yard late at night (when they were still both kids) to play on the tempting swing set! I'm glad the swing set is still in the family...and still swinging our kids and delighting them as they go pell mell down the way too high metal slide! (I remember when Doug first came home to us, at the age of 6...he was such a fireball of activity...and, just as I feared, the very first time he tried to go down the slide, he took a header over the side of the slide while he was still a good seven feet above the ground. I remember my stomach convulsing, imagining my now quadraplegic son!...but, he was fine...laughing like crazy as he popped back up, eager to try going down the slide again...me warning him fiercely NOT to lean too far to the side as he flew down the slide the next time! I remember how the kid's grandpa had a huge diesel truck tire full of sand positioned at the bottom of the slide for a soft landing, but how, when riding down on wax paper to increase their speed, my kids would sometimes fly right over the top of the huge tire to land with a thud on the ground beyond! I went down it sitting on wax paper once myself...but once was enough for me!...that made me fly a bit faster than I was comfortable with! I remember Dad C doing down it over and over again, though, with the kids...carrying his piece of wax paper to the top so he could slide down yet again!

When the swing was at Mom and Dad C's house, they always kept it painted a dark burgandy red to match their huge barn and their large deck. The first thing the kid's Aunt and Uncle did after moving the swing set to Willard was to give it a fresh coat of paint...sunshiney yellow!

I wonder how many school children spent their recesses delightedly playing on that swing set a century ago? Children are still making memories there...just a smaller group of children these past fifty years...the children of our family!