I was a real swinger!

There was a special swing in the town where I grew up. It hung from an oak tree beside Lake Waban. It had two very long ropes and a seat made of wood. The more you pumped, the farther over the lake you would fly. This gave me indescribable joy. There was another wonderful swing that belonged to our next-door neighbors at the shore. They had an1800s horse-and-carriage garage. In the old days, it held three horse buggies, but when I was a kid, it housed a rope swing that hung from the middle of the ceiling. This swing had a single rope and a round wooden seat. A grown-up had to push the rider up in the air, run in a circle, and let go. We sailed past funky neon green-and-black checkerboard painted walls and smoky black-and-white pictures of people from the 1800s. Very funky and creepy. Today I have swings hanging from the ceiling in my own house.