Chapter 25. High School Hill
We had a plan for the day after Christmas. Because of our extended absence and subsequent severe grounding, we hadn’t had an opportunity to see the Beatles’ movie, “A Hard Day’s Night” when it first came out. But one of the theaters in Burlington was showing it again for Christmas, so this was our chance. We were to meet at Tom’s house on Pearl Street, and bus downtown for the matinee. The four of us “Missing Boys,” as well as Jimmy and Larry, our scroungers, had a loud and boisterous time on the bus and in the theater.
We loved the movie, naturally. Most of the songs we had already heard, but not all of them. As we walked out of the theater, snow was starting to fall and it was a lot colder than it had been when we went in. We decided to head for Valade’s Restaurant before busing back to Essex. We were singing “Can’t Buy Me Love” as we walked into the restaurant. We stopped singing when the cashier by the door gave us a dirty look.
Valade’s was busy, and getting busier by the minute, with downtown Burlington packed with people. We were lucky to find seats, at a table for four and a table for two right next to it. A few minutes later there was a line at the door waiting for seats.
The waitress wasn’t real thrilled to see us there, suspecting we weren’t exactly high rollers, or big tippers. We all wanted hot chocolates, and we decide to split two big hot fudge sundaes between us, so we asked for four small plates.
She brought our hot chocolates right away, and we talked about the movie while we waited for the sundaes. As usual, Tom knew all about it, and he told us that the critics were already calling it the best movie ever made about popular music. Way better than any of the Elvis movies or the stupid beach movies. He was right, of course.
Our sundaes arrived, and the four small plates we had asked for. We portioned the ice cream and hot fudge sauce onto the plates, leaving an equal portion in the original dishes. We handed two plates to Jimmy and Larry at the smaller table, then Tom and I ate ours out of the big dishes they came in. We made a lot of noise, talking about the film and the songs while we ate, but the place was so crowded and noisy that no one really noticed. The windows were all steamed up so we couldn’t see how heavy the snowfall was getting.
We were there about twenty minutes, then the waitress asked if we wanted anything else. We didn’t, so she dropped a check on each table. When she had walked away and wasn’t watching us, Tom took the check for our table and handed it to Larry, who handed his check back to Tom. We all put our coats and hats back on and headed for the door.
The waitress was watching us to make sure we weren’t going to “dine and dash,” but she saw Tom and Larry stop and stand in line for the cashier, each of them holding a check. The rest of us walked out the door and into a blizzard.
It was amazing. It looked like two inches of snow had accumulated in the short time we had been in the restaurant. The wind was blowing like crazy. We were all dressed for it, so that was no problem, but we were certainly taken by surprise.
Meanwhile, inside the restaurant, Tom had reached the cashier and cheerfully paid the twenty cents for the two hot chocolates Jimmy and Larry had had and walked out to join us. Larry stepped up to the cashier with a check in one hand and a quarter in the other, then gasped as he looked at the check.
“This isn’t my check! She must have given me the wrong one!” The tears started to well in his eyes and that sweet face was crestfallen.
The cashier took the check and looked at it, then hollered to the harried waitress, who was carrying a tray of coffees across the room.
“Mavis, where was this boy sitting?”
Mavis looked over without stopping, saw that anguished face turned toward her, and hollered back.
“Table fourteen! Two hot chocolates!”
The cashier looked at the last check on the spindle, and said, “Well that check’s already been paid.” She looked at the check for Table fifteen in her hand, looked at Larry’s pleading face, shrugged, and said, “Aw, go on; you’re all set, sonny.”
The door opened and Larry came out, smiling smugly, to join us on the sidewalk.
“Not bad for twenty cents, huh?”
It was a couple of blocks to where the bus for Essex stopped, and a bitter cold walk to get there, but we didn’t mind. We were flush with Christmas presents, we’d finally seen the Beatles’ movie, we didn’t have school for a whole week, and it was snowing like a bastard. The bus driver wasn’t too happy about the unexpected blizzard, or having six loud-mouthed kids on his bus all the way to Essex, but that’s what he got paid for. He yelled at us to quiet down a couple times as he plowed his way through the rapidly piling up snow over the seven miles from Burlington to Essex Junction, but he couldn’t throw us off, not in that kind of weather.
It had become obvious that this was going to be a huge snowfall, so, while we were still excited about the movie and about Christmas, the snow had taken over as the highest priority in our minds, and there was only one place we all knew we would be on Sunday afternoon – High School Hill.
Now, it was actually the same place we went every day for school. The old brick schoolhouse that we knew as Prospect Street Intermediate School had been Essex Junction’s High School until they opened the new building on Maple Street in 1957. There was a steep, winding footpath from the east parking lot at the school down the hill to Lincoln Street, and, in the winter, it became the Junction’s favorite sliding hill, and it was still known as High School Hill.
We all had to go to church, of course, and a lot of our families, including mine, had Sunday dinner right after church, so it was after one o’clock when we started appearing at the school, most of us on foot, towing our wooden sleds behind us. Rollo’s old man gave him and some of the other Villa Drive kids a ride, and promised to be there at sundown to pick them up.
Some kids, the ones whose parents didn’t make them go to church, had been there for hours, which was nice, because they had broken in the trails, which meant they were already fast. By one-thirty, there were about thirty kids there. There were a lot more than thirty kids sliding in Essex that day, but High School Hill was for those who wanted speed, thrills, and danger. If you wanted a tame, easy ride, there were plenty of other places to go.
The starting point was the edge of the east parking lot, and the sixteen-inch snowfall had been plowed that morning, so there was a huge ridge of snow along the edge, already flattened on the top. From this ridge, there were three places to go. The easiest ride was straight down the open field to the east. There were no trees or rocks there, so no danger, but, starting from the big plowed-up ridge of snow, you could go reasonably fast and far.
The second route was, if you turned slightly to the left, you would head straight for a ten foot dropoff after about a hundred foot ride. The object was to get as close as you could to the edge before turning to avoid going over. It was especially fun if you had a toboggan. The lead person on the toboggan would head straight for the cliff, then turn sharply to the right, the object being to throw the riders behind you off and over the cliff, while keeping the toboggan, and yourself, safe. There was a deep pile of snow at the foot of the cliff, so you couldn’t really get hurt. Not too badly, anyway.
The main trail was the path down the hill to Lincoln Street. You turned left just as you started down from the parking lot, and headed for a gap just to the left of a big boulder. If you didn’t crash into the boulder, you would head down a steep trail bordered on each side by trees and rocks. There were numerous opportunities to crash head-on into immovable objects, if you didn’t steer just right, and this section of the path ended with another narrow gap, followed by a short, steep drop to a long, shallow slope to Lincoln Street. If you started with enough speed, and weren’t slowed down by any of the obstacles, you could actually slide all the way to Lincoln Street, and potentially right into traffic. I think that’s why they closed it down a couple of years later.
We started with a few solo runs down the main trail. It was a fantastic day for sliding, with deep snow on both sides of the trail, brilliant sunshine, and a trail that was getting faster with every run, as it got packed down. Pretty soon, all our friends were there, and the crowd made it more fun, and more dangerous, because you had to walk back up the trail while others were speeding down on fast, steel-fronted wooden sleds.
A kid we knew showed up with a toboggan, so we did that for a while. Four kids could fit on the toboggan, and we took turns, everybody getting a chance to be in front, and try to throw your friends over the cliff. Soon everybody had been over the cliff at least once, and we were all covered with snow.
There was an interval of competitive danger riding, which we watched with pleasure. These two kids, Bobbo and Stewie, were riding their sleds standing up, which was much more difficult and dangerous than either sitting or lying down. They started riding down the easy slope, across the field, but, challenging each other, they moved to the main trail, and everybody stopped to watch.
These kids were in our class; not close friends, but on friendly terms. Remember these lines from “I Get Around,” by the Beach Boys?
“My buddies and me are gettin’ real well known,
“Yeah, the bad guys know us, and they leave us alone.”
That sort of summed up the relationship. Bobbo and Stewie were young “hoods,” always in trouble, and our status in their eyes had risen dramatically since our six-week adventure.
Bobbo went first, and he looked like crashing right off the ridge, but he recovered and headed for the first gap. He was wearing “Beatle Boots,” not the most practical footwear for stand-up sliding, and he just made it past the big boulder before his feet slid out from under him and he crashed into the trees. Stewie went right behind him, and made it about ten feet farther before he crashed, too. They both did it a second time, with about the same results. Nobody else was brave enough, or foolish enough, to try it, not on the main trail.
The next phase was “trains.” We all had the same kind of sled, made of wooden slats with steel runners. The front of the sled was a curved steel band about six inches in front of the wooden steering bar. That six inch space was open, with a steel band across the middle, running back to front. To form a train, the first rider would stick his booted feet down into the opening in the front of the sled behind him, and the second rider would do the same with the third sled.
Because the ridge of snow where we started wasn’t wide enough, we couldn’t set up long trains, but we could do pairs, and we did that for a while. It was a lot of fun, and crazy. The second rider had no control at all; could only follow where the first one steered, and couldn’t break away because the first rider’s feet were stuck in his sled. The guy in front had to steer perfectly, because if he crashed into a tree or a boulder, there was somebody inches behind him going just as fast. Lots of laughs and lots of bruises.
We tried one four-sled train by setting up down on the slope. We didn’t get much speed without the steep slope, but, by all of us simultaneously pulling in the snow with our hands, we got started and got enough speed to get down into the trail. We crashed going through the second gap, and ended in a pile of sleds and bodies, laughing our asses off.
We did a couple more solo runs, and it was almost time to quit. None of us had watches, but the sun was low, so, standing around in the parking lot, we talked about calling it a day and coming back tomorrow. I wanted one more thrill, so I looked at Win dramatically, with eyebrows raised, and asked, “Trail of Death?”
“Yes!” he replied, “What else?”
We walked to the northern edge of the parking lot. On this side was a wooded slope, and there was a trail about fifty feet down the slope running parallel to the parking lot and joining the main path. Another short trail led straight down from the parking lot. It was only fifty feet, but it was narrow, steep, and very fast. At the bottom, you would cross the other trail and slide straight into the woods, where there were numerous saplings. Nothing big and thick enough to kill you, but, the more speed you carried, the farther you would go, and the thicker the trees. That was the whole point. With our penchant for morbid dramatics, we called it “The Trail of Death.”
I was the one who had brought it up, so I had to go first. I cleared a space on top of the snow ridge, and prepared to launch. To get the maximum speed, the best way was to start standing, and actually leap down, landing on the sled.
I leaped, and down I went. My steering was true, and it was only a matter of seconds before I was shooting across the lower trail. But instead of crashing into bending saplings, I ran into a snow-covered lump that brought me to an abrupt halt. I could hear the guys laughing at me from above as I brushed the snow out of my eyes. I started laughing, too, and then I stopped. My sled had knocked the snow off the lump I had run into, and there, looking back at me, were the beautiful blue eyes and flawless features of Sally Delisle.