Rope. I believe the relationship of man/woman (ok, boy/girl) begins on the playground. With rope. As in skipping. In the late 50's, you might have seen two classmates turning the rope.. anudder, jumping the rope, and saying:
Johnny game me apples Johnny game me pears Johnny gave me 50 cents To kiss him on the stairs..
I gave him back his apples.. I gave him back his pears.. I gave him back his 50 cents And kicked him down the stairs.. 1,2,3,4,5 (and the rope is turned faster and faster)...
Now, when you think about it, maybe not a wise choice as it takes a lotta pop bottles turned into Safeway to make 50 cents.
Rope easily entertained us. Tug of war. You pick teams, you place the very largest human being on the very end of the rope. And tug. And tug. Sometimes, one of the teams planned for funny-ha-ha and when a specific word was said, the entire team let go of the rope sending the other team, all, flat on their backs.
Jump the brook. Two ropes and a jumper. Ya start out with an easy distance to jump and then you gradually move the rope further and further back. If you missed you were out. if you by chance won, you'd walk back to class with pride being the best brook jumper. You land on the second rope, fall backwards, your tailbone will spend the next five days reminding you how much that hurt.
We skipped rope. With tricks. Double under (the rope goes under ya feet twice while you're in the air.) Double Dutch. One jumper, two turners, two ropes, turned in opposite directions. How the heck did we do that?
And recently we talked about the climbing rope to the ceiling and "it's a wonder no one fell from the top" and then I saw a guy report he did... his head hit one of the old metal heater things that usedta stick out.. concussed.. cut up pretty good, but turned out OK. To think, he coulda had the school named after him.
Knots. I wasn't a Boy Scout. I've lived my entire life with just the square knot.Years ago, next door neighbor lady, I no likey her. She talked badly to neighborhood kids. So, once an 8' section of my wooden fence fell down - I used my square knot skills to hitch it back up. Looked horrific, and for that very reason I left it up several months for her to stare at.
Holly Lake. The rope swing. Hands would get muddy, would slip off. Fun. Cheap fun.
Roped into. All our lives we're left to either avoid, or, get roped into something. "Say, I'm moving next Saturday, is there any way......." "Ah, No Hablo Engleshe' ".... or something to that effect.
Carnival barkers. They try to rope you in. They hate being called 'barkers', much prefer 'talkers'.
Amway, Nu Skin.. Herbalife.. Avon.. Mary Kay (Seen them pink Caddys?).. Scentsy.. Shaklee.. Time shares, much, many. Perhaps the 'greatest' ever, Bernie Madoff. Bilked investors outta billions and billions of dollars. They shoulda changed his name to Madeoff.
Sorry, kinda, you're stuck with rope today. If bored, I ain't gonna tie you up to stay here.. slide on off the rope outta here, I won't get mad, promise.
George Foreman. "They call it the rope-ad-dope. Well, I'm the dope. Ali just laid on the rope and I, like a dope, kept punching until I got tired. But he was probably the most smart fighter I've ever gotten into the ring with." It's OK George, I just walked through the small appliance aisle at Wally World, there's like fifteen different sizes of your grills. You ain't too bigga dope.
"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." Franklin D. Roosevelt Me thinks we've all seen that end. Children. Finances. Mean people. Managers that ain't too spiffy.
History. Wiki say "The use of ropes for hunting, pulling, fastening, attaching, carrying, lifting, and climbing dates back to prehistoric times. It is likely the earliest 'ropes' were naturally occurring lengths of plant fibre, such as vines, followed soon by the first attempts tat twisting and braiding these strands together to form the first proper ropes in the modern sense of the word. The earliest evidence of thtrue rope making is a very small fragment of three-ply cord from a Neanderthal site dated 50,000 years ago." Pardon me boys, howtheheck do they know it's 50,000 years old?
Adding more to the total boredom of this blog, I found a site with '27 genius uses for rope around the house. Mind outta gutter perverts, but yeah, I guess that one too. Among them making flip flops, rope sign, home shelving, pet toys, cat scratching posts, rope drawer handles, dog leashes, napkin rings, end of boring list.
"I'd go to Coney Island to hang out, and I saw a magician doing a rope trick on the boardwalk. I was fascinated. I guess that's how it started." David Blaine
Victor, you started with the Leon Russell song, was he a tight rope artist? No, but glad you asked. The Wallenda were, and are.
High wire acts with with no safety net. Actually, there was supposed to be a net, but it was lost in transit, so, they went with it. (We could do a whole nuther blog on safety nets in our lives). OK, I won't The Flying Wallendas began in the 1920's. Many impressive tricks, among them the seven person chair pyramid.
-Tragedies much. 1944, Wallendas with the Ringling Brothers.. Hartford, CT, a fire broke out in a tent, no Wallendas hurt but 168 people died in the fire. Geez Louise. 1962, the front man on the wire faltered, the pyramid collapsed, sending four to the ground. Two died, Karl Wallenda broke his hip and his adopted son was paralyzed from the waist down.
Karl's sister-in-law fell to her death in 1963, and in 1972 his son-in-law was killed after touching an electrical wire whilst high above. Undaunted, the act continued. In 1978, at the ripe age of 73, Karl fell in Puerto Rico during a promotional act and succumbed. Still, today, several branches of the family still perform around the World.
"Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope." George Burns
And finally, a friend we grew up with, Stephen Webb, his, great nephew (?), who started roping cows at age 6, won the National High School tie down roping in 2021, and this year, is one of four to qualify for a chance to win Two Million Dollars in the RFD-TV's The American the richest one day rodeo event ever. (I think he took third). Stephen, kept everyone updated on Facebook, and after a family member commented "how cool" Stephen, in Stephen fashion wrote "Everyone in the family should go - unless they're all tied up!"
That's way more about rope than I should have written. Giddyup, watch for rope burns, not George Burns.
Love, Victurd
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