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Nonfiction, Memoir, Fabulist Fiction & Poetry
A certain hill looms large in my memories, although it wasn’t particularly large itself.
The yard behind the house in Clifton Park, NY where I grew up (we had yards back then, rather than manicured lawns) was wide enough to contain a swing-set and a clothesline before it sloped down toward our elderly neighbor’s garden plot at about a 45-degree angle. It wasn’t a large area, but to child-me, it was the world.
In summer, clad in shorts and a sleeveless top, my mother would lounge on an ugly gray blanket and work on her tan, one eye on me and one on the mystery novel she was reading, ears tuned to the ballgame playing on the portable radio. (Go, Yankees!) My bedroom window looked out onto that hill and when my father mowed it, sheering the grass in long rows, the heavenly fragrance graced my dreams. My friends and I flung ourselves down on the crest of that hill and, arms tucked tight, rolled to the bottom, then sat up and laughed as the world whirligig’d around us.
In fall, we did the same, the only difference being the vast pile of leaves raked into a heap at the bottom to catch us, because what’s the point of fallen eaves if you don’t jump into them? As the days grew shorter, we did our best to stretch the hours lingering on the hill as late as possible, darting in and out of shadows, dancing in the light from the big bulb above the back door.
In winter–ah, winter!–the heavy snows packed and froze, then melted a bit and refroze, growing a crust thick enough to support my weight. In what I once thought was a bid to do me in, my mom waxed the bottom of my aluminum saucer with Pledge furniture polish and I careened down the hill, my heart in my throat, hanging on for dear life, laughing breathlessly, spinning in circlescirclescircles as I shot past the dead stalks in the neighbor’s garden and halfway up the distant embankment which, if breasted, would have landed me in the middle of Route 146. I never made it that far, the angle of the second hill being enough to turn me back the way I’d come, but it always seemed a close thing.
Spring was the hill’s quiet time, a sedate emergence from winter as brown grass slowly put out bright green shoots to match the budding iris in my dad’s flowerbeds. Games of pretend made us cowboys and Indians, and gave us horses our parents wouldn’t let us have in reality. As the evenings grew warmer, we sat on the brow of the hill, we kids, and counted the stars, pointing out the Big Dipper, the only constellation we knew at the time.
The hill is gone now, flattened in the wake of the property being sold and the house demolished. There’s a Stewart’s store where my home once stood, gas pumps where poppies grew. A few trees remain–old friends still–but nothing remains of the hill except for a ghostly outline only I can see, and the distant laughter of children.
Melissa Crandall 
Beautiful memory! I could picture everything. I remember where you lived. So much of the landscape has changed since our childhood. Thanks for the memories!
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I remember returning to Clifton Park after a long time away and being absolutely heartbroken at how it’s been paved over. Any charm it had has been completely destroyed. It’s really a shame because, with care and attention, it could have grown and still retained appeal. Now it’s just a place to drive through on your way elsewhere.
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