My father was always looking for ways to keep us kids active and entertained. He built a catapult out of a rat trap and a block of firewood so we could fire acorns and walnuts across the yard. He hung a long cable from a tree so we could swing back and forth across the gully on the east side of the farm. He built us a tree house with a rope ladder in the front yard.

And, he built us a trolley. The front yard of our place contained (and mostly still does) a grove of hundred-plus-year-old beech trees (planted by my grandfather in 1903). Here’s how he did it: he strung a piece of thick cable from a high branch of one tree to a lower branch of another, a distance of maybe a hundred yards. The trolley itself he fashioned from two tricycle wheels sans tires, a metal bracket that he either found or fabricated, two lengths of chain, and a short piece of wood for a seat. The wheels fit over the cable so it (theoretically) wouldn’t jump the track (although it often did; we had a long pole to use in getting it back on if this happened at the high end). After he assembled this contraption, he attached a short length of rope to the seat.

You needed a partner to do the trolley. One person would sit on it, and the other would tow him up to the high end of the cable, then get a running start and slingshot the little trolley car and its passenger in a downhill direction. If the one on the ground put enough mustard on it, the trolley wheels would hit the clamp at the low end of the cable, and the rider would swing under the tree branch in a high arc. It was exhilarating. I had the added pleasure of being the littlest, so it was easy for the others to get me going like a bat out of hell. I fear that I was sometimes a disappointment when I tried to reciprocate.

Our trolley became famous around the neighborhood, and visitors would invariably ask to use it. One time we were away for the day, and when we drove up, we found a crew of linemen, in their orange vests and hard hats, playing on it like a bunch of little kids.

Eventually the lower branches of the trees began to fall off, and the trolley had to be retired. I don’t know anyone else whose Dad built them a toy like that.