Monday, February 09, 2009

Old-fashioned tire swings

With a tidy layer of snow chilling out our world today and this evening, I decided to think summer -- and what can be more summery than a swing?

The standard swing swing, the sort with a flat board as a seat, has been turned into a playground safety officer's prime project and thoroughly wimped out in the process. Fortunately, I've found that there are still a few old-fashioned swings being fashioned from tires. The example above I spotted on a back street near the old fairgrounds; that below was at the Chino Valley alpaca farms I visited late last year.

But what to make of this object? When I grabbed a quick image in passing, I though it was some sort of tire swing. Then, on examining the photo this evenng, it turned into a possible sculpt. A deer or elk or maybe reindeer, huh? Something whispered in my ear to enlarge the putative art object -- and lo, it appears to have been sculpted from tires, possibly to make into a high-class, you guessed it, tire swing.

Me, I was never one for the tire swing, which I considered very much a guy thing. Unlike a board swing, the tire swing primarily wants to go round and round nor is it easy to control. I'm quite sure that Robert Louis Stevenson did not have a tire swing in mind when he wrote his popular poem, but then he was writing somewhat before the automobile had been invented, wasn't he?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

*That*, Mamasan, is a horsie swing. They had them at Young's Farm, and other places, for sale. The dotter, as you can imagine, really wanted one. The spinning action on old-fashioned tire swings is greatly admired by the young'uns, by the way.

Anonymous said...

This is what I call a swinging post.

Judy said...

These tire swing sculptures have become an art form! Fun pics.

TomboCheck said...

Looking closely I believe that horse is sculpted from a single tire...

The tire is flipped inside out which creates the bulged flanks, and keeps the tread pattern off your butt! :)

diana said...

Just a couple days ago my DD was saying she couldn't wait til DGD was old enough for a tire swing! Thanks for fun post!

Granny J said...

dotter -- Oh, dear -- I am getting unobservant in my dottage -- I never, never saw the things!!!

steve -- thank you, kind sir.

jarart -- I do seem to have missed out on an important development in the art of swings!

tombo -- astute observation. Thus, a more comfortable seat.

diana -- get it up before it's outlawed.

Anonymous said...

I love that poem by RLS!

It was my favorite when I was a wee one. :)

~Anon in AV.

 
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