They must not've had lookouts

One of my all-time favorite things about growing up in Tesno was that I lived across from Standpipe Hill. That place was like a second home for those who lived in our neighborhood. In the summer we would build hideouts and pick wild low bush blueberries. The lower portion that was directly in front of our house was over taken by an invasive weed common to our area, but commonly known in my household as "bamboo". We used to sword fight with that stuff and make our own little "crop circle" rooms in our make believe house or palace or ship or what-have-you. In the winter it became our winter wonderland full of various paths and trails in which we would spend umpteen hours sledding our lives away. One winter I lost a pair of glasses while sledding and found them smooshed into the ground several years later during one of the warm months. I know they were mine because they were this hideous brown plastic in a classically awful 80's shape.

Today, I brought the kids out to play where they sledded in our side yard making do with what is left for snow... and it reminded me of when we didn't care how little snow there was, we were going to sled! We would use our sleds and "truck in" tidbits of snow form various areas on the hill to the "main path" (as we called it), and we would strategically place them to try and cover the entire thing to get a smooth run. We never seemed to mind or complain about it either. Sometimes we would try and surf down- of course this was before snowboards- and fall on our faces.


One of the most fun place to sled on Standpipe, though, was the Big Hill... it was tall, it was steep and there was *maybe* 5 ft of grass before you touched pavement, just to be caught by the concrete posts with wires as a fence to catch you before you ended up swimming after the run. The trick to this hill was that you could not sled this hill safely unless there were atleast 3 of you. The unwritten rule in the 'hood was that there HAD to be 2 lookouts- 1 looking left down E. Central and the other at the other corner were Main Ave (not pictured) comes in over the bridge as well as keeping an eye on the traffic coming in from East blvd. Then after you flew down the hill you had to hurry and get out of the street (if you didn't roll out while still in the grass) all the while laughing and and looking up and the daunting task of getting up the hill. It didn't matter that the top edge of the hill was slanted in such that it made a ramp- you could go that way, but it took a while to walk up, most of the time we tried to climb the steep side usually failing and losing our footing and sliding down several times before we would cave in and walk up the long way.

While at my sister's recently visiting with her family and mom and Jess and her kids, we were talking about the hill and Mom commented that it was in the police log that someone called the cops because kids were sledding into traffic. My sister and I at the same time said, "They must not've had lookouts" and we laughed and laughed...