Swinging High

by Eva Pasco, author of the novel "Underlying Notes"

During the early Sixties a swinger named Tarzan, portrayed by Gordon Scott in Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), and by Jock Mahoney in Tarzan Goes to India (1962) — achieved a jungle high by swinging from grass ropes or vines. Back then, I did my own adolescent swinging which had nothing to do with the new twists American morality would take at the end of the decade, exemplified by the 1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. So, too young to hang around where the hippies hung, to swing and dance where the swingers swung, I moved and grooved just the way I should on my outdoor swing set throughout the four seasons.

During that era, we hadn’t yet heard through Tarzan’s grapevine about hip swinging on deluxe, multilevel, cedar wood complexes with protective roofs. My own swing set was a minimalist metal contraption comprised of two swings suspended by chains hooked to an overhead trapeze bar. A three-step ladder aluminum slide hitched along for the ride.

My dad had cleared a section of the woods which abutted our backyard for its strategic placement. As the legs of the structure had a tendency to lift during take-off when swinging high, my father remedied this by pouring concrete mix into the deep holes. Blocks encased the foot of each pole inside a cement shoe.

Swinging high, my transistor radio on the ground blared rock n’ roll or Motown sounds from one of the hip AM stations of the day -WPRO or WICE. If my sister wasn’t swinging beside me, she’d amuse herself by going down the slide my mother had the habit of simonizing from time to time which aided and abetted the bum’s rush. Things were hunky dory until I espied a snake or two in the clearing for our swing set. Since I have a severe case of ophidiophobia – an abnormal fear of snakes – it behooved my father to buy us another set which he plunked and prepped with concrete in its new location on the sand lot by the driveway.

I continued to swing high listening to the sounds of the Sixties on my transistor radio. Things had certainly soared higher as I discovered that I could get WABC out of New York on new ground. I picked up quick, I knew I would, I moved and grooved just the way I should swinging high, doing the locomotion on heavy metal.

Go to all of Eva's Articles

Check out Eva's Blog

Order Eva's Book "Underlying Notes"

Eva is on Facebook