From the Andy Stahlecker interview
July 9, 2002
Oral History MS Vol. II, pp. 278—279

Virginia: The mountain house had a big tree, and that swing was the biggest swing in the world.

Andy: Yeah, but he. . . they got. . . the mountains at their place. See, they had a place up in the mountains.

BH: I know where it's at.

Andy: There are two big trees there, and a swing up there. . . We had Pat put a log. . . well, if the swing is there, and the horses run through there once, and a horse run through there and hooked that swing and broke that pole up there. So, us guys from the ranch went over there once and had Pat put a pole up there. But. . . um. . . it was twenty feet up there. And you swing it this way, you know, swinging up this way, there's the mountain. Well, it wasn't bad, but it's pretty. . . when you're swinging out over the valley? Ooooohhhh, that's a long, long ways down there. But you know, a swing twenty foot tall, boy that thing swings a long way. And the way to get people to start, you know, you can push 'em. Here we'd just take a rope and one guy'd get on each side, and let 'em swing by, and then you give 'em a hard pull. Cause otherwise, just (?). It was such a big swing, why it'd take you an hour to get. . . get enough speed up. But we. . . they used to have a apple tree orchard—eh, crabapple tree. Crabapple orchard there.

BH: Um hum.

Andy: And my folks would go over there to pick apples. So for. . . for when we were little, before we were even big enough to pick apples, for that matter. But anyway, every fall, we'd go over there and pick a bunch of apples. Because Dentons, unless they move. . . we were good neighbors all year.

Virginia: We must have done it forever, because I remember going up there for apple pickins.

Andy: Yeah. You remember that?

Virginia: I remember that. Yeah.

Andy: And oh, they made the best apple butter. They were only about this big around. A little bit bigger than these crab. . . these apple trees that you see around here. They're just a little bit easier. . . they don't have any. . .

Virginia: These are two crabby. Those weren't quite that crabby.

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