Tag Archives: 29th Street Boise

My Folks #24 – 29th St #8 – Our Playground 4 – Whirligig

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While barrels and swings kept we kids amused dad got busy with yet another elaborate toy for our playground. He came across a vehicle’s rear transfer case and set it solid in concrete half way between the swings and the house. A metal post stuck straight up from the transfer case with a short bar welded onto the post some four feet from the ground.

Dad then drilled a hole in the middle of a board and placed the board over the upright post so the board rested on the short metal bar. With half the board projecting from both sides of the metal bar it made an excellent teeter totter for we young kids. We soon learned the evil game of jumping off while our companion on the other end of the board was high in the air. 

And we soon learned the price of revenge …

Even more thrilling than teeter tottering was when the board spun around. Dad made sure the gears in the transfer case still ran freely so the board we sat on was free to twirl. In fact, we never called the contraption a teeter totter. It was always “the whirligig.”

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That board was a 2×6 straight piece of lumber. There were no indents for legs nor were there handles to grab onto.

In a home movie dad has placed my older sister on one end of the board with my younger sister and I spaced out on the other end so the board was balanced out flat. While we were balanced above the ground dad is in the center of the board pushing the whirligig as fast as he could. I remember hanging on tighter and tighter to keep the spinning force from throwing me off the end and cascading onto the ground. Even so, while my younger sister and I gripped ever tighter, my older sister experimented with being able to lay flat on her belly and spread her arms and legs out, spinning around the post with only her weight to keep her from being thrown into oblivion. Then dad is shown running like the dickens to get away from the whirligig once we were at maximum daddy-power. 

Unfortunately dad was seldom around. We neighborhood kids were as resourceful as we could be at speeding up the whirligig for one another but I don’t remember ever reaching the threat of centrifugal disaster without adult power.

TO SEE THE MOVIE CLICK HERE

One of Vicky’s neighborhood friends was the Davies boy. They lived across the dirt street and the second door south. They were famous with we kids because their dog was “a REAL WOLF” and their dad called them home by standing in their yard and producing an extremely loud whistle. 

Davies had a little brother even younger than my sister Nyla. One day that younger brother walked absentmindedly into the spinning whirligig. His mouth was just at the right height to get smacked by the board. Rumors of a lawsuit began circulating. A few days later my older sister was playing on the Davie’s swing set when she fell off and broke her arm. 

I was quite jealous of Vicky’s plaster cast, what with everyone signing and fussing over it. Then that 1940s medical technology began to stink and she began poking anything she could between the cast and her arm it to get relief from the itch. An unbent wire clothes hanger seemed to work as well as anything. It went on for weeks.

Rumors of lawsuits faded away and the whirligig disappeared. 

My Folks #23 – 29th St #7- Our Playground 3 – Swings

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After setting up the north half of our property for a trailer rental business and getting grass to grow on the south half, my dad got busy with metal pipes and his welding machine. 

Before long a structure set in concrete towered over our playground. Two swings hung on long chains between two posts. Steel rings on chains hung on the south side of one post and a monkey bar suspended between two other chains tempted kids on the north side of the other post.

Across 29th Street to the west of the swings was a grocery store. Typical of neighborhood grocery stores this family-owned shop was small, in this case a one story stucco building. Also typical, a Coca-Cola signs with the store’s name was displayed over the door. Pumping our tall swings until we could see the flat roof of the store became a popular challenge as every kid in the neighborhood grew stronger.

As we grew stronger and pulled the swings ever higher we became addicted to a new sensation. At the moment of reaching the greatest height and before starting on the swing back, the chains would go slack. A brief snatch of weightlessness hesitated. Then our butts came slamming back onto the wooden seat of the swing as the chains snapped every link together, pulling us into a curve and away from smacking straight into the earth. It was thrilling. 

To this day, when I see astronauts floating in space, I remember that weightlessness. I’ll bet those astronauts have even better view of that flat roof …

Was the salvation of the chains as thrilling as when we jumped off of the seat at ever higher upswings to land on our feet farther and farther out onto the grass? Was it as thrilling as when we laid our bellies on the flat seats and twisted the chains up tight only to pick up our feet and let the chains straighten out by spinning us? The chains separated and dropped us with a thump when they straightened out only to have the momentum that twisted the chains together for shorter and shorter twists before staying at rest. 

Was it as thrilling as swinging so high that we’d go over the top of the towering swings and around to the other side? 

 

Well. That never  happened. 

Try as we might we never got quite up to horizontal with the top of the swing set. But my mind spent plenty of time contemplating the possibilities: Not going fast enough to keep the seat extended. A moment of weightlessness before falling onto the top of the swing set before plunging to the ground. Or succeeding on going so fast I’d keep wrapping the chains around the top, ever closer to squeezing myself into the pipe the swings hung from. Gruesome and gruesomer, my fantasies drew me in.

Call me a chicken but I never got close to swinging over the top of the swing set. But then, neither did anyone else.

TO VIEW ALL PHOTOS AS MOVIES CLICK HERE

My Folks #22 – 29th St #6 – Our Playground #2 – Barrels

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Before long dad figured out empty 50-gallon oil barrels were better at keeping kids busy and active than most playground equipment. One barrel became two. The heavy steel barrels were great for walking on, like lumberjacks staying on top of rolling logs. That could be augmented by one of we kids folded in the barrel, heads and heals and butts tumbling over one another like a dryer drum. No matter how evenly we tried to fold ourselves into the drum one end of us was always heavier than the other. Whoever was walking on top of the drum was challenged with lifting the heavy parts of the inner child  to the top of the barrel only to instantly shif to holding the barrel back while the inner child’s weight sped the barrel out from under them. If the kid walking on top of the barrel should loose control and fall forward the barrel and its occupant would roll over them and walker would instantly be dead. It all made perfect sense to us. 

We all got quite good at walking on those two barrels.  

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MOVIE

None of us got good at walking the barrels down the two-foot slope of the berm surrounding the house, but rolling down it while being inside was a thrill! 

An endlessly interesting science experiment — although we did not know the words “science” or “experiment” — was filling a barrel with water from the garden hose. With great effort against the weight we would push the barrel over and witness a mighty flood fanning over the yard. 

Yep. I learned early that water is heavy and runs downhill …

My Folks # 18 – 29th St #2 – Filling Room

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Nothing about building our new home south of State Street remains in my memory, but then I was one year old at the time. I presume most of those days and evenings were spent with my mother at our tiny home on 30th Street north of State Street while dad spent evenings and weekends five blocks to the south, turning half of Mr. Corbridge’s farm into gravel and lawn. 

The block slanted from the northeast to the southwest. A level pad had to be created before construction of a combination machine shop and living space could begin. 

On the north half of the building, this pad left the three large doors of the machine shop essentially level with the gravel lot. The southern half of the building extended onto a two-foot berm that leveled the slopping ground. This berm was soon covered by lawn where we toddlers spent hours rolling down this gentle slope.

If only my folks were still with us so I could ask, but I think scratching the northern quarter of the block into gravel for renting trailers and leveling a pad for an extended building would have been when my parents thought it prudent to invest in a Ford N Series tractor. They soon found the requests to rent the full-sized tractor were as insistent as those looking for trailers. 

By as early as I remember we were watching two Ford N Series tractors driving away in the hands of strangers. Some helped with the large gardens people were still maintaining. Some were turning those gardens and Boise’s surrounding hills into home sites.

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