SAGE ADVICE: The ups and downs of boyhood

There’s something about a hill that makes a body want to go up it. And there’s something about that hill that makes a boy, say between 5 and 10 years old, want to go down it, fast.
I’ve been there and done that. I’ve been up and down every hill I could find. I’ve slipped down them on sleds. I’ve ridden down them on toys not designed to hold the weight of an 8-year-old kid. I’ve slammed into trees at the bottom of them, tearing apart little red wagons in the process. I’ve caught rides inside tractor tires, making myself vomit with dizziness. And when wheels weren’t handy I’ve turned myself into a wheel and rolled. It was crude but effective for the fix.
I was surprised, though I don’t know why, to learn that my kids, led by a 6-year-old’s longing just coming into full bloom, are strung out on hills.
Before I got home the other day the two of them had lugged four tires, two huge and two just very big, over to where they are hoping to build a flying down the hill machine. They caught me even before I’d turned my flying down the interstate machine off, asking if I could lend a hand.
Nothing on this earth would make me happier. It transports me back to the flying down the hill machine I piloted when I was about their age. My father helped me make mine, and it ranks even now as one of my favorite vehicles. It was a slab of wood, two axles and a rope. It was steered, roughly, by which side of the rope you yanked on. Mostly though it went in the general direction of down and you held onto the rope for dear life. It stopped when it hit the upside of another hill, a long flat area or something immovable – like middle school.
The first thing the boys and I had to do was carefully consider if old tires from a Ford Bronco and metal posts from a chain link fence would really make the best flying down the hill machine. Yes, it would be big, I conceded, even ginormous. But is bigger really better? I asked. They answered that yes, indeed it was, especially when it relates to flying down the hill machines. But, I countered that maybe it wouldn’t be bad to make our first out of something that won’t require welding, a union representative and a week of paid vacation? It was a deal, they said, that they could live with. 
The next thing we had to do was cuss, under our breath of course, the fact that only a few months ago I had hauled off to the dump two broken push mowers and the skeletal remains of an old Snapper riding mower, complete with an intact steering column. The 4-year-old repeated the word “crap” in that endearing imitation of daddy until he fell asleep.
The third thing we’ll have to do, I told them, poking around the house, looking for stuff that might be useful, is to raid Poppop’s and Papaw’s. I bet, I said, that they’ve got some wheeled trash about. We’ll look this weekend, they said. Then we sat watching the sun go down, listening to the “great ideas” that kept coming from my eldest son’s brain. The latest requires me to hook up my old tiller to the flying down the hill machine, that way, they can ride it up the hill, too, leaving a path of upturned earth in their wake.
And then we’ll plant flowers on the broken ground.
Contact Mark Sage at 228-6611 or .