To the left of the short driveway that lead to the garage was a huge oak tree. I loved that monster of a tree with it’s huge, wide trunk and tall limbs. In the fall, thousands of acorns would drop to cover the driveway and the road – leaving a an area of acorn powder ground up by passing cars. I started many a small oak from those acorns – planting them in a small pot and nurturing them in the spring. None lasted more than a few months, but it was great to watch them sprout and grow from nothing.

Moving up the hill towards the house was a second driveway – this one unpaved. My mother usually parked her car in the old garage (at least until it became too unstable to park under it any longer), and the second driveway was for the other family members’ cars. This driveway sat at the bottom of a steep embankment that lead from the front yard of our house down to the driveway, ending in an often repaired stone wall. That “bankin'” as we used to call it, was a great source of entertainment during most of the year. On snowy winter days, we would drag our sleds to the top of the hill and fly down it only to wince in pain as we flew over the stone wall and crashed to earth in the driveway. Sometimes, we would build a packed snow ramp at the end to give us more height. With just the right conditions, we could ride our sleds down the hill, across the first driveway and down into the neighbor’s yard! In the fall, the crackly leaves made another great medium for sliding down the hill – this time on our butts!

Climbing to the top of the “bankin'” and looking down towards the garage, revealed another area that provided hours of fun for me as a kid. To the left, against the side of our house was a long set of poured concrete stairs. These stairs weren’t always there. In fact, for many years, we had a back door of sorts that opened into nothing but empty space. Built by my uncle and cousins with some help from my brothers, the stairs were another natural playground. It was fun to slide down the long metal handrails and jump off the top step. I also learned just how hard concrete can be from banging my shins on the edges of those steps. In the shadow of the stairway was the part of the embankment that we would walk down to get to the driveways. No grass grew in this path and the worn gulley provided an easy path for rain to run down the hill. Therefore, in dry weather this part of the hill was a great place to play. I would spend hours there with my Star Wars figures. The powdery soil made a natural miniature Tattooine while the gray color of the stairs reminded me of the rebel hideout on the fourth moon of Yavin!