Hmmmm. I just can’t help but speculate on the backstory here. Dig this:

Perhaps the homeowner always wanted a tree swing when he was a boy but his parents never let him have one. So he vowed that when he had little ones of his own he would give them everything he never had. But the children never came, and the tree kept growing, so the man kept changing out the rope, year after year, hoping that maybe someday…

No, that’s too depressing.

Maybe the owner is a hardworking, well-respected professional — an accountant or endocrinologist — and he always says the same thing when people ask about the swing. “Came with the house,” he laughs. “Just can’t bear to take it down.” But late at night, after he’s put away the suit and the Blackberry, after the rest of the neighborhood has gone to sleep, he becomes a secret trapeze artist, flying brilliantly over the street in the wee small hours, lit only by moonbeams, porch lamps, and the glowing passion of the insomniac widow next door who watches from her kitchen window…

But then again, I tend to idealize. It’s just a swing, right?

Go to Glimpses of South Pasadena