One Christmas, Dennis tried to convince Jennifer, aged 4, that what she wanted from Santa was this really neat jungle gym (made by Creative Playthings and which could be ordered only from the company’s catalog). He imagined he could set it up in their very spacious back yard and happily visualized Jennifer playing on it with all her little Palisades friends, among them Sarah Ryan, Lisa Lattes, and Melanie Shapiro.

But little Jenny steadfastly expressed her strong disinterest in having that jungle gym. Dennis REALLY wanted her to have it, though, and, over many days, and with his persuasive rhetoric skills (I’ve always thought he should have been a lawyer), finally whittled little Jenny down. And so, with just a few days left before Christmas, she finally gave in and agreed to be happy to get from Santa this special jungle gym for Christmas. Dennis raced with glee to the telephone to order it from the catalog, and to his utter shock and horror learned they were all sold out! And after all his efforts to cajole and persuade! And now there were just two weeks left until Christmas! What to do?

There was only one thing Dennis could do: He’d have to build the jungle gym himself, which he did. Using two wooden ladders he bought from the local lumber company, plus other assorted cross pieces and other wooden supports, he fashioned his own version of the Creative Playthings jungle gym in time for Christmas, and made it look as much as possible like the one Jenny thought she was getting from, um, Santa. Oh, these Lamont scientists are so resourceful!

Fast forward now to 1972, six years later. Dennis and Judy Hayes sadly have gone their separate ways, she and the kids go back to Kansas, and he is living alone on Orchard Terrace in Piermont. Another family moves into the same Vanderbilt property in HeyHoe Woods: Leslie and Arnold Kaplan and their one-year old daughter, Élan. They had moved out of Manhattan, relishing and adoring the beauty and privacy of HeyHoe Woods and all the space. They weren’t quite so thrilled with the Lalire’s Doberman, Eric, who terrified Arnold as he made his daily twilight walk home from the 9W bus down HeyHoe Woods Road. He even took to hiding a baseball bat in the bushes and carried it with him in case Eric was loose, which he often was. Leslie, a young mother of 29, was also occasionally chased by Eric as she raced her baby in the stroller up HeyHoe Woods to meet up with Betsy Crumb and her little boy, Ross, or Ann Tonetti and her little girl, Katie.

One lovely spring day in 1974, Leslie and her little girl, Élan, were poking around the woods behind their house in HeyHoe Woods, when Leslie spied some sort of wooden object half buried under the leaves. They brushed away twigs and leaves and debris, and slowly but surely the outline of some type of apparatus began to emerge, a structure of some sort. It was too heavy to pull out on her own, so Leslie waited until Arnold came home from work that evening.

Together they pulled and prodded until they could drag it into the open to see plainly what this thing was that had been buried for so many years: It was a jungle gym. Clearly, someone had left it behind and it had deteriorated, but perhaps not beyond repair. Leslie and little Élan spent their days sanding it and painting it lively colors, and Arnold put it up for his daughter in the back yard. Leslie has home movies of the day the kids from the Palisades Community Center Pre-School — where Élan went and where Gail Hyde was the teacher — made a “field trip” to Élan’s house in HeyHoe Woods to play on Élan’s wonderful jungle gym.

Another fast forward to 1976, almost half a decade later. Arnold and Leslie sadly have gone their separate ways, he to a new apartment in Manhattan, she remaining put with Elan in HeyHoe Woods.

Truth is, Dennis Hayes and Leslie Kaplan were not strangers to each other because they were both members of the Palisades Swim Club and, in fact, upon occasion had played doubles tennis together, he with a date, she with her husband, Arnold. Dennis, now divorced four years and living the bachelor life, and Leslie, now separated about six months and playing piano a few nights a week at the Alpine Lodge on 9W, eventually gravitate towards each other.

One spring day Leslie invites Dennis to her house in HeyHoe Woods, where he discovers a jungle gym in her back yard and inquires about it. She explains that her little girl Élan plays on it all the time, that they had discovered it in the woods two years prior.

“This is my jungle gym!” Dennis said. “I made this for my daughter Jennifer when she was a little baby girl.” Leslie looks confused. Then Dennis revealed: “We used to live in this very house.”

Leslie and Dennis were married in 1978 and celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in May 2008. The End.