Trampoline flight–No meals served

Anyone interested in buying the book my story was published in, The Gruff Variations, buy today.  The charity organization who put together the short story anthology is trying to up the ranking on Amazon by having everyone buy on the same day.

While you’re here, check our trampoline.  This picture is the location of our trampoline the day it went Wizard-of-Oz.  Below is the second picture from the same location, but looking right, over the two fences the trampoline hopped.  It traveled due east over one fence, turned in mid-air to cruise north over a second fence, a wood pile, and a flat-bed truck, and finally dipped under a tree at least four-stories tall to land on our neighbor’s back lawn.

I had woken up that morning to the words, “Mom, it’s really windy.  I’m scared.  Our trampoline is moving all over the place.”  I sat up, gusts of wind whistling in the windows.  “I’ll be right there, Lina.”  I had to tug dumb compression hose onto my right leg (if you don’t know what that is, throw salt over your shoulder.  NEVER find out.)   I dress, go to the back window and . . . .

“Lina, where’s the trampoline?” I say.

“What?  It was right there.”

“Mom,” Cora says.  “Mom, I see it!  I see it!  It’s in the Van Wagner’s yard!”

“ . . . ”  I had to get my glasses before I could believe her or respond.  “Don’t let anyone get into the knives,” I said.

With that, I left Lina and Cora to protect the younger ones from objects I don’t bother to secure inside my house and drove to the neighbor’s house (yes, drove.  The houses in Riverton are really far apart, okay?)  There’s my trampoline, flattened to the ground and topped by a home-storage gasoline tank the size of a refrigerator (only in Utah).  I freaked out.  Tornadoes do stuff like that and I didn’t even have a helmet on.  Then I found out my neighbor had seen the trampoline in flight and had gone out, removed the remaining legs, and tugged the gas tank over the tramp so that it wouldn’t be “liberated” again.  Which was very nice of him.

In the end, a week later we took the trampoline apart, transported it back to our house, and used a torch gun to heat and re-straighten the poles that hold the safety net.  Five springs and one leg fell off during flight and still the mat and net were not torn.  We even found all the springs in the wood pile.  Go figure.

Look for the stairs coming off the back of the house.  The trampoline landed right next to them.