Monkey Bar

 April 22, 2019

Sometimes an accident can be a gift from God. Some months ago, my friend Harry gave me a leaf rake, the kind that you drag behind the lawn mower. Why he didn’t want it, I don’t know, but he was happy to get rid of it, and I was happy to get it. A couple weeks ago, it came in real handy in my back yard along the creek where last fall’s leaves got covered by the snow before I could get to them. That machine saved me two sore shoulders and about three hours’ of hard labor.

While at our family/neighborhood Easter egg hunt Saturday, I noticed the carpet of leaves in son Nate’s back yard, and offered to rake them up, weather permitting. Weather permitted today, so I hitched up the rake, drove over, and proceeded to clean up the leaves under the big maple by his picnic pavilion. That maple has a couple swings and a monkey bar hanging from it.

On my fourth or fifth pass beneath that tree, the tractor roll bar caught on the monkey bar, breaking one of the chains and cracking the limb that held it. Usually, you don’t want to break something while doing a good deed, but when I stopped to examine the damage, I could see that the weak link had already rusted almost completely through. That section of chain was clad in plastic which held in the rainwater. Definitely a bad design, and definitely a stroke of mercy. Better that the chain broke while I was raking than when a kid was hanging upside down from the bar.

I gave Nate a ride in the bucket so he could saw off the broken limb, we cleaned up the pieces then I helped him stack some wood. It was a good afternoon; I’ll gladly replace the old chain with new, and soon one of the kids will be hanging on that bar under a different limb. God is good, and I am grateful for a mishap redeemed.