THIS SITE IS DOPE AF

You had to have luck also. I'm still amazed my brothers and I have both eyes and all of our digits.

 

Yep, we did too.

All my aunts and uncles hanging out in the grandparents back yard during a cookout while the cousins played lawn darts, hide and seek or tag. Nobody was too worried, they had a doctor in attendance and my dad always had his medical bag in the car.

My uncles would always tell us to fetch them beers, Olympia, Coors or Hamms were the choices in the coolers. We'd always run to the coolers, pop the top, take a drink then run it back to the uncle or aunt making the request.

They'd look at the can, notice the missing sip and we'd get dirty look or two. Grandma would then yell at them to quit telling the grandkids to "get your damn beers!"

I'd fetch one or two for grandma during those cookouts also.

Man, those were some good times.

 

One summer our jam was rope swings in the woods, at the end of the block…

Things started off mild enough with your basic 20 footer over the creek. Everybody had a few ‘out and backs’ before they built up the courage to let go and make it to the other bank. Good times.

Never satisfied, our cadre of skinny, cutoff-jeans-wearing, beef-jerky-in-the-snuff-can spitting, foul-mouthed, forest banshees was ever vigilant for ways to up the game:

•the ‘T’ bar
•climbing rungs on the ‘launch’ tree
•a small collection of yard tools ‘borrowed’ from home, for clearing areas that would make the cast of TWD jealous with envy
•ever higher ‘climbing’ expeditions to raise the pivot point of the rope into the biggest trees
•etc.

Then, one day, we hit the mother lode. On a recon expedition over the hill, along the big electrical transmission line, we found it: an entire spool of 1” cable laying in the woods. You know, the one on the enormous oak spool, big as a kitchen table. Fucker must’ve weighed a ton, half buried in the dirt, covered in vegetation and probably 40years old.

For days, we toiled, from dawn ‘til dusk, to free our prize from it’s earthen vise. All manner of engineering was employed, our lizard brains and scrawny biceps strained to breaking by the task. A wild army of shirtless, grungy, little, jungle people with red, white and blue sweatbands, hacking, slashing, digging, prying and heaving ‘until it was free and our tribal victory cries rose to the heavens, circled the earth, and shook the sandy burial mounds of the Egyptian slaves who raised the Pharaohs’ pyramids.

Another few days to roll it through the woods… planning the course, mounting obstacles, clearing the way, laying ‘track’, building ‘bridges’ and finally it was at the location.

Several more days, and the rigging was complete in the biggest tree we could find - probably at least an 80 year old monster. The crotch we tied off to had to be 60’ in the air and it was near where the bank sloped down toward the creek.

We had laced four cinder blocks to the bottom, to work out the kinks in the cable and found that, with a ‘team assist’ it swung with a satisfying momentum.

More clearing of the area and some final adjustments and it was ready.

Now this thing wasn’t a straight Tarzan swing. Rather, it was more of a sidehill, diagonal, sweeping arc, out and around to make it to the other side of the creek canyon and, with the mass of the thing, once your feet left the launch path you were committed, totally and utterly committed.

All was right in the world.

We spent the next few weeks in the woods perfecting our techniques, clearing more obstacles, spitting, farting, swinging and arguing over everything from who had the best Darth Vader voice to what a tampon was.

Finally, the dog days of summer had worn down, back to school sales begun and you could smell it ending.

This was it. The gods demanded a champion of the summer. A truly epic swinger that would carve his name into the granite tablet of history…

(*At this point, the reader should note that it had rained for several days before)

Jason wasn’t the best spitter or farter, but he wasn’t the worst. He wasn’t the biggest, fastest, strongest or the loudest of our gang, just average, but for some reason the wheel of fate landed on him that August day.

We had really gotten pretty good at the launch and added a ‘tow rope’ so the ground team could get a long run and ‘assist’ the swinger with a sort of run like hell and then “whip”.

Jason mounted the swing, which we had raised up the hill higher than ever before and well beyond the beaten path of the ‘runway’.

Safety checks were made.

The ground crew was briefed.

Commands were given and…

a half a dozen pre-pubescent boys took off running straight down hill, pulling with all their might on a rope attached to 60’ of cable, a couple hundred pounds of cinder blocks and their pal Jason as he hurtled through the forest on a one way ticket to outer space.

Now, as mentioned, the key was to get just the right stop, whip, and release on the tow rope for the perfect arcing swing out over the creek/ravine. We had been perfecting all summer just how to do it, but, we had never before put so much ‘juice’ on it and, more importantly, our young brains had yet to even comprehend the coefficients of friction involved with a wet rope, a well beaten and slick dirt path and worn out Converse sneakers. At the moment of maximum output, the pivotal ‘whip’ moment, the ground crew lost it’s footing, the tow rope slipped and our pal Jason was bound for the stratosphere.

I remember the look in his eyes as the cable reached its zenith, nearly horizontal, in-line with the creek, then lost it’s tension and everything stalled in mid-air. To his credit, he held on and rode that beast straight down, rocketed past us all strewn along the slope of the ravine, and slammed straight into the trunk of the tree.

A couple weeks later, after the excitement of the fire department and ambulance squad hauling our friend out of the woods, forced confinements, restricted diets and parent-supervised dismantling of our deadly contraptions we finally witnessed his triumphant return to school, the whole shebang… crutches, knee brace, arm cast, stitches and new front teeth.


He was rad.

 

Outstanding!!!

 

This thread is straight bananas and I love it

 

yep ....LOL

 

I hear ya, brother.

 

Grew up in the 80’s in South LA near USC.
It was wild!
BMX’d all over the place and we would make giant ramps out of junk.
The gang members would chase us trying to jack our bikes and stray dogs chasing us everywhere.
Adrenaline and Kool-Aid ran through my veins.

 

In 1982 at 13 years old I bought an '82 Murray X24 from Sears with money earned from my paper route. I thought I was Captain Badass. I kept my ol' trusty Schwinn 3 speed for paper delivery. But the X24 was my prize.

Looked exactly like this.



I wonder where that thing is these days?

 

I found a mint dyno gt at the thrift store last year. My uncle raced one when I was a kid. My childhood rushed back to me. Things I hadn't thought about since 4 or 5. Needless to say I have a dyno gt in my garage now