Hold On Tight

Ok before I tell this story we are going to have to agree to disagree. If you are a young parent you are going to be tempted to tell me my father was a bad parent, and I would strongly disagree with you. On the other hand I would never under any circumstances tell you that you should be the kind of parent he was. I think we will have to agree that things that didn't seem out of the ordinary in the 1970's could be shocking today. So please dear reader take this as a story from a different time and not parenting advice.

My father was a very fun dad, not as in he was a party person but in that he enjoyed playing with us kids and providing entertainment for us. He took us to movies, he took us fishing, he made endless things for us to play with and he made even the most mundane chores fun for us. One time he woke me and my brother up in the middle of the night to tell us the snow was perfect for tubing and he was right, I don't think I ever went faster on a tube than that moonlight run.

He kept food on the table by logging. We all spent our days out of school working for him in the woods. He likes to say that my childhood was a picnic in the woods every day. And it was along with hard work that built a lot of character in all of us.

He noticed that there were a lot of places where logging was too dangerous with a skidder in the area he worked in. We lived in the Black hills in South Dakota and he got jobs in Wyoming too. So he decided to build a yarder. A yarder is when the machine is on the top of the hill with a tower and spools of cable that goes down the hill and is attached to an anchor point at the bottom. Then you can hook the trees up to chokers hanging from a very big pully that is pulled up and down the hill.

When he was building it I was living with my birth mother and my step father so I missed a lot of the process but I was really excited to see how it worked. And on one of the weekends I went to visit we were going to go see it. My cousin was visiting from Washington so we were both getting a show.

The machine itself was a bit underwhelming for me, I didn't really understand how it would work. I did want to play with the levers but I knew that wasn't going to happen so I tuned out the explanation my dad was giving to my cousin. Then my oldest brother was telling me to go get a stick. So off I go into the woods to find a stick.

I came back with a small stick and my brother took it from me, broke it and said " No dummy it has to be as big as your upper arm". So back into the woods I went and came back with a stick as big as my arm but it was old and dry. He took it from me and broke it over his knee and said "do you want to die? It has to be a green stick" . I had no idea that it was a death situation so back I went and got a green stick slightly bigger than my arm to be safe.

When I got back every one else's stick had already been attached to a choker and mine was quickly hooked up. We all put the sticks between our legs' and as I was standing there trying work out what was going to happen my dad walked away towards the machine and said over his shoulder "Hang on tight". So I tightened my grip on the one inch cable. And we were off before I knew what was going on we were hanging in the air going so fast downhill that we were parallel to the main line. I was looking down at the ground blurring below us. My sister kept saying to hold on tight, I assure you she didn't need to tell me that.

Just about the time I started to relax and think it was ok and I could manage holding on tight we came to a complete and immediate stop. Now we were bouncing in mid air probably 100 feet in the air. Once we stopped bouncing my oldest brother and my cousin who was the same age as him started to show off. My brother started hanging from his knees on his stick. Keep in mind my dad couldn't see us. He slacked the line and we started dropping towards the ground at maximum velocity. About 30 feet from our death dad stopped the fall and tightened the line. We went back up just as fast and were back to bouncing in mid air. At some point my brother got back on top of his stick and was holding on again. Then dad took the brakes off and we started careening towards the bottom at full speed. Just when I was sure we were going to die dad put the breaks back on and we came to a full stop maybe 50 feet from the bottom.

Before I had time to be grateful I was alive we were headed back up just as fast as we had gone down. He made a couple more stop and drops on the way up before delivering us gently back on top.

I have been a bit of a thrill seeker in my lifetime. I have ridden every roller coaster I came across and done some pretty stupid things on a dare but I can honestly say nothing else ever compared to that ride. I rode on the yarder many more times but that first ride when I had no idea what was going to happen was the absolute best thing I have ever done.