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.”
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.
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.
Deans Great Wahoo 