For many years, a detachment of railroad cars were parked alongside the main tracks. Why they were there and why they stayed there for so long, I do not know. All I know is that they became our playground.
I never did count how many cars where there. Maybe a dozen. Some of them still had coal in their bellies. Not a full load, but maybe a quarter of a load. And they just sat as summer turned to fall to winter and spring, year after year.
Us neighbor kids – Gary, Eddie, Tommy, Dean and myself mainly – would walk the back 40 to the railroad tracks and climb the cars. We didn’t have any particular game we played. We were just over-active young kids looking to do something. Maybe it was just a lazy, hazy day, or maybe we just got a bug and decided to go climb them. I don’t know the reason why we did what we did. We just did.
None of us got hurt on those cars, although the possibilities were endless if you were a mathematician and would take the time to figure the odds. I was good at math. I could multiply two and three figures in my head, although it occurred to me having that ability was as useless as it was to run across the top of a rusting railroad car.
But it was summer and we kids did what kids with no responsibilities and almost an endless supply of meadow, fields, mountains and a meandering Allegheny River to roam did – just go until darkness overcame us.
It hits me now that back then, back in the 1940s and ‘50s, security issues were non-existent. Kids were let loose and told not to get hurt, and that was it. Of course we got hurt. But we never told. You just got back up, wiped the blood off, and continued on.
The days I walked alone among the idle and rusting railroad cars, I would sometimes sit on the active railroad tracks and heave stones at them. I’d pick out a spot and try to hit it as many times as I could (keeping, of course, my active math mind busy with the count). Other times I would try to throw stones from a distance and put them in the cars with coals, scoring two points every time I was successful.
Time was not a factor. I had all the time a summer brings to a young boy of 9 or 10. The humid and hot New York days crept along at a pace slower than a snail. Some days there were was no breeze to cool my face and after a while I would retreat to the woods on the other side of the tracks, find the spring that gurgled up from deep in the ground and soak in the cold water like a life-saver from the creek it created. Man, that was cool. I can still feel my bare feet swishing in the cool and very shallow creek water.
Refreshed, I would head up the mountain – I say mountain but it may have been just a little over a 1,000-feet tall – and after pushing though the underbrush emerge on top where there was a TV Tower that my dad helped build. Not many people had TVs yet, including our family, but it was built to accommodate the future.
I was too scared to scale the tower, although I thought about it every time I reached there. No, I would forego that and head back down the other side to the huge rocks that hundreds, maybe thousands or millions of years before had been deposited there by a glacier.
As I scrambled down I would pause from time to time to search for Indian artifacts that littered those Allegheny foothills. Arrowheads were common finds, as well as sea fossils, which I always assumed were delivered by the same glacier that left behind the rocks.
It’s funny now, but I don’t recall ever wondering about the mystery of all my finds. There were just there. And because there were so many of them, it was not a big deal to find them.
Rock City Park in nearby Olean – I lived six miles away in Portville, N.Y. – has some of the biggest rocks around and the claim is that they were part of an ocean floor many millions of years before.
The flint arrowheads were likely from the Seneca Indians who live in that area. Although to be fair, Indians of many tribes were the early settlers, so it’s anybody’s guess where they came from.
Once I got to the rocks, I would climb all over them. They are nestled at the bottom among trees that have grown so much taller now, which makes finding the rocks a little harder. But as that young kid there were easy to find and fun to climb.
A few of the rocks were as big if not bigger than houses. The medium sized ones were the ones I climbed so I could lay on top of them and let the serenity overtake me. There is nothing quite like being on top of a big rock and listening to the sounds of the forest. I love being free, free as a bird, and in those moments I was an eagle peacefully resting in a perfect world.
After a few hours of rest, I would take the long way back home, hiking along the edge of the trees until I came to the clearing that reached to the top of this one section. That clearing was used as a pasture for Scutt’s cows. Scutt’s farm was over the hill and as I climbed the clearing and reached the top I could look over the valley that included the farm.
The top was a great place to sit under this lone tree. As I sat there I would pick a blade of grass and stick it in my mouth and chew on it. Grass blades always were so cool, and again it brought me peace as I surveyed the valley for signs of hawks and cars traveling along Route 417.
Below I could see the railroad cars that I only a few hours before had been throwing rocks at. Slowly I would make my way down the hill and take the dirt (and sometimes muddy) tractor road that went through cow pasture to the Scutt Farm.
It was fun to walk through the cow pasture, because it presented danger as well as cow pies and other slop. The danger came from the longhorn cows and the occasional bull that lounged in a separate pasture.
For some reason, the cows did not like me. So I would have to pick a spot where I could be far enough way from them. I then would crawl under the barbwire fence, and run as fast as my legs would carry me. Often, I just beat the cows. They would spot me and take chase. I don’t know what would have happened if they had caught me. Only now do I think how stupid (and fearless) I was.
That reminds me of the many times I was around the barn when the cows were herded into it to be milked. I was not very tall, maybe four feet something, and those cows would see me and dip their heads and try to hit me with those horns.
Most of the time I jumped out of their way, but sometimes the farm help would yell and grab them, and then shout for me to get out of their way. It was kind of fun, although certainly dangerous. I guess I just loved to live on the edge.
Then there was the mucking to be done, and when that was over I would walk outside to the grain bins and inhale as much as I could and take in the sweet aroma those grains gave off. I would grab a handful and sniff them.
It was always a good way to end another lazy, hazy day in the summer of my youth.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.