The Gravel Pit

There a sort of magic that lures young boys to the gravel pit. You can descend below the depths of the earth. You can see her many layers. Adventure, climbing, playing on abandoned cars and strange rusting equipment. It seems as though the gravel pit invites people to throw their junk into her open stretched arms. It was probably the sheer joy of seeing something tumbling to a final resting place that attracts people to toss things into the abandoned 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 the area, Portland and Milwaukie. 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 abandoned the pits. The gravel pit was used to create a housing complex.

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 excavation 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 of today, danger was our problem not somebody else's. 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 abrupt 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 disappointing. 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 miscalculate 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, more like a pond. With the so may rainy days in Oregon the build up of rain water was inevitable. Even though the ground was very porous, the water manged to build up and stay almost all year round, at least until summer. Then it would dry up leaving exposed all sorts of things. 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 outdoor 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 abundant, then they would disappear into frogs. Sometimes we would catch that tadpoles with little budding legs. Later during the summer we would be catching little frogs. They were much more fun to keep. Tadpoles needed water and would last less than a day, while frogs would stay with us for weeks.

The gavel pit was a place where you could find all kinds of neat rocks. We were convinced there was gold, silver and maybe even diamonds. We used plastic lids to do some panning. All that we got though were small aggats of different color. The mustard colored ones we called gold, the silvery ones silver and so forth. We would find those broken rocks that had a mesh of colored or white veins in them where we would see different images, faces, animals.

At the highest point of the gravel pit there was running along the cliff a ledge path cut into the side. How it got there we didn't know, nor did we care. It was important that we could use this path to make our way down o the bottom of the gravel pit. It wasn't safe at all because there were some areas where the was just enough space for a small kid to hug the gravel pit wall and work his way slowly to five or six feet to the other side. This part of the trail was about 40 feet above the bottom of the pit. One day my brother Laird went first and the ledge behind him and in front of me gave way and crashed to the bottom of the pit in a cascade of bouncing rocks and a flume of dust. There he was frozen. Although he could have gone forward, also that part of the ledge had given away slightly even under his own feet. He refused to move any further. I made my way back and ran to get mom.

She called the fire department and there we had it a crowd of onlookers at the top of the gravel pit we me in the forefront calling down to my brother to “don't worry mom was here with the firetrucks, oh and mom's not mad”. That was important because to get in trouble with mom was sometimes more fearful than a gravel pit cliff. I was so proud of my brother for not crying. We was rescued and became an immediate hero.

We still visited the gravel pit from time to time but later as we got older we ventured farther and farther away from our home looking for new adventures.