Thursday, February 08, 2007
The Galloping Hills
Be a pretty nice outdoor day if the breezes weren't kicking up 20 mph gusts. Throwing stale bread around for the ugly birds, wind carrying it away. The February sun radiating some heat, you can feel it on your back now. Yesterday I walked over a mile on some errands & wasn't chilled until nearly home & the sun was near setting.
Remembering how we'd coerce one or the other of my parents into dropping us off at Galloping Hill Golf Course after supper & spending a few hours sledding in the dark - only one slope of several was lighted, it was always frigid & usually windy out there, with many lunatics sliding every which way on sleds, skis, toboggans, saucers, food trays, inner tubes, large pieces of cardboard, even early xtreme sport types wearing ice skates who'd wandered over from the pond. Of course there was a "Suicide Hill," great bumpy ride culminating in a grove of trees & a drainage ditch if you had deficiencies in steering & braking power. If we didn't have a pre-arranged pickup (nobody wore watches), we'd have to use the pay phone by the clubhouse, & by that time we were already approaching hypothermia. Amazing now that none of us suffered frostbite or broken bones. Dad was fairly tolerant of physical risks like steep hill sledding, tree climbing, & old wooden extension ladders; mom probably just tried not to think about it. We all knew kids whose parents wouldn't let them do anything, which is why some of those kids gravitated toward our house when the snow lay packed hard & slick on the slopes of the Galloping Hills.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Remembering how we'd coerce one or the other of my parents into dropping us off at Galloping Hill Golf Course after supper & spending a few hours sledding in the dark - only one slope of several was lighted, it was always frigid & usually windy out there, with many lunatics sliding every which way on sleds, skis, toboggans, saucers, food trays, inner tubes, large pieces of cardboard, even early xtreme sport types wearing ice skates who'd wandered over from the pond. Of course there was a "Suicide Hill," great bumpy ride culminating in a grove of trees & a drainage ditch if you had deficiencies in steering & braking power. If we didn't have a pre-arranged pickup (nobody wore watches), we'd have to use the pay phone by the clubhouse, & by that time we were already approaching hypothermia. Amazing now that none of us suffered frostbite or broken bones. Dad was fairly tolerant of physical risks like steep hill sledding, tree climbing, & old wooden extension ladders; mom probably just tried not to think about it. We all knew kids whose parents wouldn't let them do anything, which is why some of those kids gravitated toward our house when the snow lay packed hard & slick on the slopes of the Galloping Hills.
