A few days ago I talked about living on Brookcrest Cir. in Decatur GA and what a steep driveway we had near the top of a very long and very steep hill. I'm gonna tell you what fun you can have with a steep driveway and a long steep hill. We had no cell phones or laptops or tablets or for that matter no internet so our mean parents forced us to play outside, can you imagine that?
We found things to do to entertain ourselves and had a real good time doing it. Let me tell you about one of the things we did. We would ride anything on wheels, bikes, skateboards, large Tonka trucks, skates, strollers and Flexible Flyers, and even at least 1 minibike.
We had a ball rolling down my driveway on everything I just mentioned. After a while we got bored with just riding down my driveway so we came up with something new. Somebody came up with a used tire and with that we thought the possibilities were endless. We came up with a new game called Dodge Tire. One at a time the rider would start about 2 houses above mine and would ride whatever they had down the big hill but the twist was someone would be in my steep driveway with the tire and try to time it just right and try to knock the person that was riding into the street. That all sounds well and good and easy to do but it was not. We were all pretty young and had not learned much about geometry or gravity yes so we almost always missed the rider but when we did connect it was a GLORIOUS THING!
Out of nowhere someone showed up to play with a truck tire. Now this tire was nearly twice the size of the car tire we were using and as bloodthirsty as we were we decided it would be unsafe to use the truck tire on children.
We started a new game but it didn't last very long and I will explain why. First of all I had no idea where these tires came from we were right in the middle of a very nice neighborhood with nice houses and fine tried lawns and no junkyards within at least 10 miles but I digress.
This new game went like this, the person was still in my driveway with the car tire and the other person would start the truck tire a couple of houses up and start the tire rolling. We had a plan if we failed to hit the truck tire. You see there was someone posted in the street below my house to stop the truck tire incase it got by the car tire...The first try was a miss by the car tire and the truck tire was picking up speed and the guy who's job it was to stop the truck tire chickened out and dove out of the way and at that point there was NOTHING anyone could do but stop and watch...We're talking about a big heavy truck tire rolling straight down a long steep with nothing in the way...Except the house at the bottom of the hill. It was lined up perfectly and the tire hit the curb and bounced one time in the yard then onto the front porch then right in the middle of the front door knocking the door and the frame into the middle of the living room floor. There was a stunned silence at the top of the hill then all at once it was like watching a cartoon where everyone runs in the air for 2 seconds before we could move but when we did you could here front doors of every kid out there slamming shut as we ALL went home. This was about 55 years ago and I'm assuming the statue of limitations has run out on this case. Kids left alone will not be bored they will entertain themselves.
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