Pounds Hollow

My brother Rob and I were older than our friends' daughter JoAnn by two or three years.  JoAnn didn't have her own two-wheeler bicycle yet.


Our families were on a weekend camping trip together to Pounds Hollow Recreation Area.  Pounds Hollow is in the Shawnee National Forest, at the southeastern-most edge of Illinois.  Our campers were parked in adjacent sites, about two thirds of the way down a big hill - at least, in looked like a big hill to my ten-year-old eyes.


The weather was hot and sticky, as it tends to be in Southern Illinois in the summer.  The campground was primitive, meaning that there were restrooms and fresh drinking water, but no shower facilities or electrical hookups at the camp sites.  It didn't matter to us kids.  We had been amusing ourselves by swimming in the lake and tramping through the woods with our dads.  Now the dads had gone off somewhere and we were at the campsite with our moms, looking for a new form of entertainment.


I don't remember who came up with the idea first.  It was probably Rob.  He was the idea man, and more daring than I was.  Regardless, we decided it would be fun to push our bikes to the top of the hill and ride down.  Rob and I both had the standard kid-bikes of the time.  They were Easy Rider style, sporting high handle bars and banana seats.  Rob's was blue, and had a white seat.  I don't remember what color mine was, probably some traditionally girl-related color like pink.  What I do remember are the sparkly plastic streamers that dangled from the rubber grip of each handle bar.  They waved about in the wind and tickled my arms when I rode.


It was the biggest rush ever, flying down the hill one after the other on the narrow asphalt road.  The air lifted the hair off the back of my neck and felt almost cool.  The mid-afternoon sun slanted through the trees; we flashed from shadow into sunlight and back so rapidly it all became a green-gold blur.  The piney smell of camp fire smoke filled my nostrils.  I grinned and whooped from sheer joy.  Then the first bug hit the back of my throat and I learned to grin with my mouth shut.


JoAnn saw what we were doing and asked for a ride.  She didn't fit with me on my bike, so Rob and I took turns going down the hill carrying her in front of us on the seat of his bike. The difference in size between his bike and mine was just enough that I could reach the pedals, but steering was tricky.  Which made going down the hill even more of a thrill.


At one point my mom came out of the camper, saw what we were doing, and told us we couldn't give JoAnn any more rides down the hill.  The three of us begged for one more ride.  She relented, with a warning that we should be careful.  Of course we'd be careful!


That last time, I was on my bike.  Rob and JoAnn were in front of me, on his bike.  We shoved off from the top of the hill and were on our way down when a car came up behind us.  The driver saw us and slowed.  I tried to move over so he could pass.  As he came up next to me, I maneuvered closer to the right side of the road.  My front tire got into the loose, pea-sized gravel of the shoulder.  I could feel the front of the bike wobble.  I tried to correct it, to get back onto the pavement, but it was too late.


The car was already beyond us when I finally lost control and wiped out.  I'm pretty sure I blacked out for a few seconds.  Next thing I knew I was sitting in the gravel at the side of the road, bike forgotten, screaming as loud as my lungs would allow.  Gravel was embedded in my arms and legs and face.  The sight of blood streaming from myriad cuts and scrapes on my body, combined with the the shock of the fall, sent me over the edge.  Rob and JoAnn, terrified, had already run off to find our moms.  Our moms - and every other grown-up within hearing distance - had already heard me screaming and were on their way over to help.


When we got to the camper, Mom grabbed some towels and water and started cleaning me up.  She alternated between scolding ('You're lucky JoAnn wasn't on that bike with you', 'You could have been hurt much worse than this'), and trying to calm me down.  By the time she had gotten most of the rocks picked out of my skin and slathered Rawleigh's salve over me I was still in pain, but the hysteria level had subsided to a few random tears and a bad case of the hiccups.


For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, I lay on the cushioned seat at the front of the camper, keeping as still as possible.  When I moved I sweated, and the sweat made the cuts sting worse.  I dozed a little.  Once in a while, the straw-colored curtains swayed inward from a stray breeze.  I could hear the other kids playing, the parents talking as they prepared supper.


I rebounded pretty quickly, as kids do.  The web of long, paper-thin scars on my arms and legs faded away.  I was in my early thirties when I became aware that they were no longer visible.  I do still bear one small token from that accident, however, a pucker of scar tissue on my upper lip.  When I look back at the incident now I think about all the ways it could have turned out very differently.  Still.  If that's the worst I've had, I'd say I'm doing all right.