revisit

The previous post reminded me of an older post about remembering life on Scenic Hwy. I wrote it after I returned home one day after going to a party at a home on Tuckahoe Circle. I rarely drive up Noccalula Mountain - probably no more than five times a year. Driving up the mountain from 12th Street used to be so common - now no more. The mountain is a foreign land to me and every time I drive up the hill and through the neighborhoods - my mind keeps flashing back. I see Falls Drug, Noccalula-Nic-Nak, the old bridge that would always jam on weekday mornings that would always have school traffic bottle-necked. Pearly & Ben died a long time ago. Mr. & Mrs. Cartee. So much is still the same up there - enough to turn the projector on again. Too many places are gone. Too many folk have gone on. The mountain to me is filled with ghosts. I know this wouldn't be if I drove up there more.

I remember it snowing up there occasionally. We had great hills in our yard for sleds. We had great steep roads for defying death on a sled. Tuckahoe Golf Coarse was a great gathering place for kids on the mountain to ride down on their sleds. Once you got going, the ride went on for a very long time. You'd hear kids screaming and laughing and then after a while all you could hear was the wind and the sound the skids made as they cut through the snow. I had to turn the sled sharp in order to stop short of the barbed wire fence that bordered the tree line. It was so very cold that ride, and a very long walk back up to the crest. My toes felt like ice that particular day, my face was freezing- but the moment was so very awesome.