Rope Riding

Faded memories come to life when you see thing like the things you once did, and after seeing the girl climbing that rope again, I was reminded of several things I did as a child, that I had forgotten about. One of those things was like something those girls did a few years ago. stand on a table like thing and standing in the swing and jumping off. I grew up as the oldest of seven children, and the things we did then would be considered suicidal today. because of the radically paranoid pansy society we live in today. Anyway we grew up on a dairy farm in Northern Minnesota, and our barn was a high round top roof, with a lean too on each side. One side was for our horses and the other side was for the cows. The middle with the high round roof was open from the roof to the ground, except for a small partition in front that we used as a pump house. This area from the roof to the ground and roof to the top of the pump house was for storing hay. There was a long steal rail at the peek that run from the front to the back. On this rail was a pulley type thing on wheels, that looked like a toy upside down tractor. a rope went around that pulley with one end of the rope going to a pulley at the end of the rail on down to a pulley at the bottom of the building that was hooked to the horses, so they could pull on it. The rope went under another pulley with a thing that had long forks on it and looked like a big mouth that opened and shut. The whole thing when pulled up to the track moved or was pulled out by another rope and lowered unto a wagon loaded with hay, and the forks were opened and shoved into the hay on the wagon and closed full of hay as the horses pulled on the other end of the rope, it was pulled up. when it got to the top it went into the building and was opened inside the building where the hay fell to the ground. When the haymow was full of hay the big forks were taken off leaving the rope on one pull hanging down. in the spring when the hay was gone, we would pull the pully and rope to how high we wanted it and tie it off. Then we would take the pulley end of the rope up to the top of the loft over the pump-house, stand on the pulley and leep off and swing to the other side of the barn and kick off that wall and swing back, over and over again. I can still here my sister yelling my turn Russey, my turn.