The Gravel Pit

There a sort of magic that lures young boys to the gravel pit. You can descent below the depths of the earth. You can see her many layers. Adventure, climbing, playing on adbandoned cars and strange rusting equipment. It seems as though the gravel pit invites people to through their junk into her open stetched arms. It was probably the sheer joy of seing something tumbling to a final resting place that attracts people to toss things into the adbandoned gravel pit.

Our house in Milwaukie Oregon was only a few hundred feet away from a gapping hole in the earth. The area was evidently very fluvial. The earth just gave up tons and tons of prime aggregate. That gravel pit is probably responsible for many foundations around Portland. The rock was crushed cleaned and used in the ready mix cement plants in the area. When they could take no more gravel because of the proximity to homes, they just adbandoned the pits. The gravel pit was used to create a housing comlex.

Our gravel pit was exceptional. It seemed as though it stretched from horizon to horizon. At one end the gravel pit was not very deep, since it was really an exevation where they removed a large portion of a hill. Since our house was at the top of the hill, we were not very far from the highest point.

In those days there was not much consideration for liability as there is today. There was no fence, no warning signs. You were expected to know not to fall into the pit. In those days most people relied on common sense. We never thought about danger in the way it is thought about today. It is a well known and understood fact that you cannot protect everybody from everything. People will invent ways to get into trouble. The gravel pit was no exception. We frequented the pit to do all sorts of kid things.

Rolling an old tire off of the top of the gravel pit was one of the most exciting things to do. If you got it just right the tire would bounce down the cliff and roll almost to the other end, threatening even to go on forever, if it were not for a boulder or two to throw a fateful wobble onto the tire to give it a few wild turns and then to come to an abrubt rest . On a bad roll the tire would wobble end over end and just smack on the bottom near the base of the pit. Very dissappointing. We found that if you gave it a good roll before reaching the edge of the cliff then the tire would stay upright.

The centrifugal force was enough to keep the tire going until the energy of the journey down the side of the cliff petered out. Laird and I were only afraid that in our vigor to roll the tires towards the edge of the cliff that we would miscalulate and end up going over ourselves. Our common sense worked well in these matters.

At the bottom of the gravel pit was a small lake. With the so may rainy days in Oregon the build up of rain water was inevitable. Even though the ground was very pervious, the water manged to build up and stay almost all year round, at least until summer. Then it would dry up leaving exposed all of the. The life created in these pools was amazing. There were three levels of creatures. Those that lived above the water, those on and the others under. The dragon flies swooped around the various plants that grew from the ponds edge. Why they had to hover in one place for as long as they did, we never could figure out. Maybe it was just to let us see them. That they were scary, so we should leave them alone. We could never hit one with a rock or catch one for that matter.

There were also the water skimmers. They walked on the water. We couldn't so we would get our shoes all mucked up and would try to dry them before going home. Our shoes never did last very long. We would either loose them or they would fall apart. Dad learned not to invest in new shoes. Mom could never insure that we only used them for school. So the Goodwill was a preferred shopping spot for our shoes. The mothers of the good kids that didn't ruin their shoes would give them to the Goodwill, so we could ruin them.

The tadpoles were those little back peas with small tails that swam everywhere. We would catch them and then let them go. They weren't very fast but they were numerous. There would only be a short period during the summer where they would be adbundant, then they would disappear into frogs. Sometimes we would catch that tadpoles with little from legs. Later during the summer we would be catching little frogs. There were much more fun to keep. Tadpole needed water and would last less than a day, while frogs would stay with us for weeks.