Galena and the Hill of Death

My younger brother sent me the above picture, recently. Left to right, it’s my brother John, me and John’s pet collie, Kola. This picture was taken in Galena Illinois when we were kids.

John and I are half-brothers. Our mom was married six times. I used to tease her, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again”. She finally succeeded in finding her happy marriage before her death in 1992. John and I have different dads. My father was Ed/Edward and John’s dad is Harvey.

Harvey had two houses, one in Galena and one in Chicago. Harvey’s family used to spend time between the two places, and I would sometimes visit them, mostly during the summer, though I remember a winter here and there. For few years, I would visit my “real” father Ed in the summer, but that was the extent of his participation in my life until shortly before his death. My father and I resolved our (my?) conflict toward the end when I decided to let my animosity toward him go and forgive him, for the most part. Strongly disliking him was exhausting.

My time spent in Galena were good memories, despite the time that Harvey accidently drove over my bike, ruining it. I guess leaving it behind his pickup truck probably wasn’t my best move.

Galena, in stark contrast to Illinois, was a classic small town. The “town” was a strip road that scratched from one end of the town to the other. It was boarded by stores, restaurants and diners on both sides of the main drag. All of this is bordered by a small to medium river. The town proper was surrounded by farms and peppered with subdivisions with paved and gravel roads.

It was on one of those subdivision’s gravely, paved roads that found my brother, myself and one of his friends on our bikes at the top of a VERY steep hill. This was pre-bike crushing, so all our bikes were in proper working order. John’s friend challenged him to ride his bike as fast as he could down this semi-gravely paved road that would frighten a downhill sky jumper. It took some convincing by his friend, but John finally agreed. I desperately tried to talk him out of it.

The ride started out well enough. That is, until he got about 15 feet down the mountain. He really started picking up speed. Do you remember me mentioning the gravel on the pavement? It reared its ugly head. Just as John was reaching MACH 5, he hit a patch of gravel and his bike flew out from underneath him, leaving John to do his best Superman flying impression until he was met with solid earth. He slid down the road for that had to be 20 feet, coming to a rude halt on the road, where he proceed to scream like a World War II solder who’s just been shot.

I’ll spare you the gruesome, bloody details. We managed to get our bikes down the hill to him, but at a much more measured pace, and helped him back to the house where Roselyn, his step mother, patched him up like a triage surgeon.

So, thank you to John for helping me to remember some of the good times we had as kids.