Blog: Dadmissions: The Swing Set Saved Our House from Hurricane Gloria

For all my New England friends, invest in a good swing set.

My sister and I grew up in a ranch house in Sharon, MA. We had the most boring swing set in the world that our dad had built. It was basically two planks of wood with a crossbar piece of wood. But those boring planks of wood were sunk into the ground with no less than 5,000 cubic yards of cement that my dad bought at the old Grossmans on Route 1, trucked home in the blue Nova, and then installed with his red bandana, white T-shirt, and a cigarette in his mouth.

It was a boring swing set with two boring swings tied to a boring wood crossbar. The swing set sat in the backyard in front of these five old oak trees which had precariously fused together at the trunks over the generations. We hated that swing set. But in 1985 when Hurricane Gloria barreled into New England, that swing set saved our house.

As we hid at my mom's job at the Ellis Nursing Home, one of the five oaks came crashing down in the storm. It would have sliced right through our house, demolishing the kitchen, bathroom, and the home's natural gas tank in back. It could have killed us. It could have, were it not for the boring swing set with the boring wood planks, sunk into the ground with the 5,000 cubic yards of Grossmans cement.

The tree actually hit the swing set, the swing set bent, it nearly came down, but it hung tough supporting tons of tree, directly over our house by less than a foot.

On this New England hurricane eve, I remember the boring swing set which prevented a total demolition of our house. Hurricane Gloria packed a punch. Please hunker down this week. And for the love of god, use excess amounts of cement, unusually large and ridiculous amounts of cement for your home improvement projects!