LAUNDRY HILL If you can't get excited about the costly erosion of our farmlands, you are, I'd say, a flatlander or from a asphalt street, guttered, with street car tracks and car lying in wait to cross your path at the intersection half-way down
the snow laden incline. Remember that one time, perhaps, when ought to do some real belly-floppin', show-off speed runs down the steepest hill in the county!
We had such a hill when I was a pre-teener. It was located along Arlington Avenue, in a part of Radford, Va called "Central" The hill was located a block or so up the paved incline of Arlington Avenue at the point where dirt-and-graveled 2nd Street crossed the avenue westward bound toward our school house. Now, that - lemme-tell-you - was steep hill!
The run started with a eight-ten foot drop off which gave us a good start and the ran about fifty feet a, perhaps, a 20% downward slope. At that point the path disappeared entirely and our sled was riding on air alone until we hit the deep drift of snow. That was the end of the ride until we got i packed down with heavy use. The ravines lower exit end had just a low wall and, with when packed down well we could take a deep dive or jump the hole entirely and continue on the gentle slope which ran a good hundred feet or more to paved First Street and the street car track.
That was a hill! We often built a bonfire at the top but
the walk back up was a doozie. We went around the sink hole on the way back up from First to Second Streets.
Years later, when I returned I made it a point to stop at "Laundry Hill"- so-called because the building along the west edge of the First Street end was the towns leading laundry. The building is gone . The hill is still there, but a strange thing has happened. It has shrunk.
I wonder if the rest of our lives - and of our memories - are subject to that same type of erase-ive erosion?
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-19-06 [c379weds]
