Although I built the swing, I cannot sit in it for it is filled with ghosts. Ghosts of family, ghosts of friends, my grandmother, mother, father, sister, brother, nieces, nephews and a few who I don’t know or perhaps I don’t want to remember. When I first built the swing, I enjoyed sitting in it, particularly at dusk.  I remember the I last sat in the swing one evening with my father a few months before he died.   It was not long after I started seeing ghosts.  I would feel them, sense them, and at times, the magical time with the last light of dusk fading, see their wavering figures out of the corner of my eye sitting there in the swing across from me.  I cannot sit in the swing for it is filled with ghosts and there is no room for me.

I built my swing mostly as a tribute to my father, that, and I like just to build things, something I am sure I got from Dad.  I had wanted since I was a boy to build a swing, a swing like Grandma and Grandpa had on their front porch.   I always thought of it as Grandma’s swing for she was always sitting in it.  Only later did I learn that Dad had made the swing after Grandma said with a mist in her eyes as if she was remembering a long-cherished moment, “Your dad made the swing when he was a boy in shop class in high school.”  It was then I knew that I wanted to make a swing like my Dad had made but it would be many years before I would do so.

One of my most favorite times was in the summer at Grandma and Grandpa’s after dinner, served promptly at six o'clock, perhaps ham, and fresh picked from the garden, peas or beans, fresh sliced tomatoes and mashed potatoes, fried okra. After dinner my brother and I would ask grandma for a mason jar and we would punch holes in the lid. As dusk fell, we would go out into the field behind the house and catch lighting bugs, put them into the jar to put on the nightstand to watch them sparkle like stars in the night sky as we fell asleep. 

As it got darker we would be called in and we would gather on the front porch as dusk fell. Some combination of my brother, sister and I would sit in the porch swing with Mom or Grandma, while Grandpa and Dad would sit in rocking chairs.  That far out in the country you would experience a silence like no other.  The sound of the rocking chairs going slowly back and forth on the wood floor of the porch with an occasional squeak of floorboard sounding loud in the silence. At dusk in the country the whole world seemed to slow down and almost stop. It would be so quiet that you might hear the neighbor's dog bark off in the distance, the nearest neighbor being five miles down the road. Grandpa and Dad would talk in that slow southern way…. Grandpa saying "That sounds like Uncle Maxi's dog"….. after what seeing like a long time in which I thought that no one was going to say anything, Dad said…. "I couldn’t say" …. and then after a seemingly long wait when you think that grandpa wasn't going to say anything more … "Sounds like he’s onto a coon."  …. After another minute the tone of the dog’s barking changed and Dad said…. “Sounds like he’s got him treed.” This slow, drawn-out conversation would go on until it got dark with them not saying more than a dozen sentences in the hour.  All the while we kids sat in the swing with Grandma, feeling loved and comfort. I think it might have been Grandma’s ghost I first felt sitting there in my swing.

I made dinner for Dad and my brother and after dinner we went out and sat on the back porch. Dad and I sat in the swing while my brother sat in a chair across from us. As evening approached, Dad commented how it was nice it was, it had cooled off from the heat of the hot Florida day, there was a slight breeze. I agreed, it was nice out. Weather was always something Dad and I could talk about. The new pair of bluebirds went in and out of the bird house, a pair of pigeons under the bird feeder and the mockingbird trying to keep the other birds away.  Lucky, Dad’s dog, wandered about under our feet and out onto the lawn.  Dusk is a time of transition, no longer day but not yet night, as special time of in-between.  In the country, sitting on the porch, if you pay careful attention, the air cools, a slight breeze, the sound of a bird, a dog barking in the distance, fireflies start to come out, a whippoorwill’s haunting sound.  It brings about memories of the past, a time long ago, not only for me but for Dad as he sits beside me telling me a story from when he was a child.  With the sun setting, the sky aglow, Dad telling me a story about times of his past, times long ago.  As we then, father and son sat on the porch with evening falling, so Dad once did with his father.   Dad’s ghost now sits in the swing.

With the progression to night, the sunlight faded, and night sounds slowly emerged.  The crickets starting up, a dog barking in the distance, and on those special summer nights, the sound of the whippoorwill.  It would start with a single “whip-poor-will” and then pause and you wonder did you really hear that?    Then again, “whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will” and I asked, “What was that?”, and grandma answered, “Its a whippoorwill.”  And I asked… “What is a whippoorwill?”  and Grandma gave a simple answer “a bird”.   I would wonder what kind of bird is that with such a strange haunting sound, a bird you heard, but never see? 

  Night would fall, the song of the whippoorwill would end, and it would be time to go home.  We would say our goodbyes and give our hugs, pile into the car and dad would drive us home.  More often than not my brother and sister and I would be worn out from spending the day at grandma and grandpa’s and we would be half asleep as we left.   But there was one night I stayed awake a bit longer as we left.  I sat in the front seat between my mom and dad as he drove down the dark dirt road when off in the distance, just at the edge of the car lights, there were two red glowing eyes in the middle of the road like some demon.  Dad slowed down, the red eyes came into the range of the headlights, and we found a very strange bird sitting in the middle of the road, and Dad said, “that’s a whippoorwill”. 

Tonight, Dad sitting next to me in the swing Dad says, “I guess we should be getting home.”, and yells in a loud voice to David who is sitting in the chair across from us, “Lets go!” I steady the swing while Dad, holding the arm if the swing to steady himself. slowly gets up and calls for Lucky who has been running around in the backyard.  We enter the house and head to the front door, and I walk them out to the car.  Dad goes to the passenger side letting David drive, something that has been happening more lately, probably a good thing with Dad being 93 he probably shouldn’t be driving anyway.  I stand there watching them drive slow down the street then head back inside.

Dad died the following year.  Although I built the swing, I cannot sit in it for Dad’s ghost sits in the swing.

See Also
The porch swing 1959
Sitting on the Porch Swing
Building the Swing
Ghosts in the Swing

 

Larry Mixson, 02-02-2024