MEMORIES FROM MY PAST.

On one of the exceptional warm days last week, I wanted to go back to my ole’ hometown, Fleetwood PA, and photograph the old sledding hill/road that is still here to this day. The long sledding hill is on Popular Street in Fleetwood. The weather temp. was up close to 60 deg, and nice & sunny.

Looking up the sledding hill from the old bridge.

This is Popular Street in Fleetwood. Back in the early 60’s us kids used to use this long steep hill for some great sledding during the winter when it snowed. The road remains pretty much the same as it was long ago. Back then there was no driveway off to the right where my car is parked. The bridge is the same as it was but needs repair. There are 1 or 2 new homes that were built since then, but it’s mostly the same.

A up closer look at the long hill.

Looking way up to the top with the nasty curves.

During my time here this part of the road was dirt. Was not paved back then. Us kids would start our sled run up at the top and sled all the way down to where the bridge is. It was some really good fast-running sledding. We could go like hell. While the sledding lasted and it didn’t melt away that much we had a ball all day long. Sledding down as far as we could go, get off the sled, and walk back up the hill to do it all over again, and again. There were times that we’d fall off the sled because of going so fast, but that didn’t bother us much.

Sooner or later, one of the people that lived here would spread some ashes on the hill and that would ruin everything. There were also times when a car would stop at the bottom, let us kids hang on to the rear bumper, and we’d get pulled up the hill! At that time we never thought of how dangerous this was to do, but it was a nice break from walking back up that hill again. I’m more than sure this crazy thing we did with a car is not done anymore.

In my memory, we had some really great times here. Maybe the younger generation still does what we did long ago.

Thanks for reading.

Les