“Nobody could touch the Flexible-Flyer”

Center St. Hill. (Screenshot on the so-called “silly MAC.”)

Last night the ABC Evening News did a report on a giant snowstorm in Seattle.
The reporter was buffaloed because an urban street had been closed and was being used as a sledding-hill by kids.
The street was a hill and was icy.
“We used to do that in Haddonfield,” I said.
Center St. hill — a drop of about 100-200 feet from the plateau Haddonfield was on, down into the Cooper Crick (“Crick” is the kerreck south Jersey pronunciation, not “creek”) defile.
I used to try to climb that hill on my bicycle as a child.
Bicycles back then lacked gears, so they only had one gear: cruising speed; about 10 mph.
There was no gearing down for hills.
Cresting the entire Center St. hill was a struggle; very steep toward the top.
But it could be done.
Too steep for traffic on snow.
They’d close off the entire hill when it snowed.
But it was a residential street crossed by two level side-streets (see map).
As such it had three segments.
The top two had side-streets at their bottoms, so ya couldn’t sled the entire hill.
The part ya sledded was the bottom segment, which went down into woods, and climbed back up the opposite side.
My sled was rocket fast.
It was my father’s infamous “Flexible-Flyer,” the fastest sled in the entire known universe.
That sled lasted a long time, despite the frame being broken, and held together with string.
It was so fast Ted Hinderer bought a new sled for use at Hercules hill.
I still whomped him — even after he waxed his runners with wax-paper, an old sledding trick.
I was the king of Center St. Hill.
Nobody could touch the Flexible-Flyer.

RE: “Silly MAC......” —All my siblings use Windows PCs, but I use an Apple MacIntosh, so am therefore reprehensible and stupid.

“Haddonfield” is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey near where I lived until I was 13. We lived in adjacent “Erlton” (‘EARL-tin’); founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield, an old Revolutionary town. “Cooper Crick” was a small river (creek) north of Haddonfield.

“Ted Hinderer,” my age, was my sister Elz’s first husband. (“Elz” is my sister Betty [Elizabeth]. She’s second after me, 63 [I’m the oldest at 64+ (almost 65)]. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She’s been married four times — me only once.)

“Hercules hill” was a good sledding-hill near our home north of Wilmington, DE. It was on Hercules golf-course.