The Earth is Moved, the Toboggan Returns and Two Boys Kneel

A pre-schroer memory of Schroer, the street where all the water goes. There were yellow other-wordly earth-eating machines running  across a dry and dusty field. They were much larger than life and I didn’t know what they were doing, but this world evoked a work of the gods: they just kept going around the same oval track with a pleasing sound of purpose. Mythological beasties. It was actually an ill conceived scheme from the outset but I was not aware that earth-moving creatures represented the proverbial deck-chairs of a Titanic metaphor: water always find its level.

Toy on eBay from the era. They looked like this but the real movers and earth shakers circumnavigated pre-schroer.

We followed the same path of water in a more snowish form from the King house to Rodescheimer, probably navigating the same toboggan that leveled the silver maple of a previous telling (right here on 315glenroy). A wall of trees began as a couple American elms

I actually named our cat “Sticks” in honor of the threatened American Elm. As a kitten Sticks would click like a stick on a wood floor. The fur on her legs was the shade of an elm. So the name on her apocryphal birth certificate is “Elm Sticks.”

and a choke-cherry tree with chewable sap. Sap and rumination in a 1950’s existence. The tree wall proceeded along a ridge of ever denser trees that demarcated the southern bounds of the Hunefeld farm: right where Dolly, the retired white mare of sagging-back persuasion, waited for us to bring carrots foraged from the 315 kitchen. Dolly wasn’t interested in any tomatoes from the field of 10,000 ripe ‘maters that dominated Mt. Alverno west. By way of unneeded advice: if a tomato fight finds you in a tree when Farmer H appears, tell that gentleman of earth that he saved you from the Hillside Gang or the convenient ne’er-do-wells of the moment: the ones who sent you climbing that tree to escape vegetable projectiles. The Hillside Gang will appear in The Legend of Sacred Mountain.

Well, before getting mired in details from Schroer to Hillside Gang I return to that speedster toboggan. Those trees midway from King to Rodescheimer, narrowly separated, tested the mettle of sled riders: thread your snow vehicle of choice between two trees and immediately encounter the steepest of 315 slopes. That slope is only a few yards from the construction workers’ scrap materials fire: the fire that Paul and I thought could be extinguished by tipping a refrigerator carton onto its flames. We learned something about the flame point of a cardboard structure that day, then discovered how divine pardon for setting off an inferno may be achieved through Mom’s familiar way: “You two kneel and pray until I tell you.” While thus serving time, we would share giggles from around the foyer corners.

Built upon an ancient stream, Schroer would have made good ground for finding Indian arrow heads: I remember discovering them in the 1950’s somewhat primeval landscape surrounding 315: a bit closer to Gaia.

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