My brother and sisters and I grew up at the north end of the Shenandoah Valley where the Skyline Drive begins its way down the Shenandoah National Park. Here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Valley is full of hills and dales. Contrast this with say Illinois, where my cousins grew up. The land around Peoria is so flat that if you climb up on a ladder you can see the Arch in St. Louis where my other cousins live.
One time when I wasn't quite 10, my cousins Betty Jane, Jamie and John Wargo came from Illinois to visit us in Virginia. This story is a little sad for me now because Betty Jane and Jamie aren't with us anymore. They were both beautiful people.
Today, John is the head of his own family and I'm quite proud of him. John is probably one of the most talented and artistic people I know. His
Custom Paint Shop has won many awards and been featured in magazines for the custom work he does on all types of automobiles.
Jamie and John were about the same age as my brother Eric and I. This particular visit, while the adults were inside doing whatever adults do, we boys were outside playing in the street. Our street was relatively flat and we were knocking around with a Big Wheel and a little red wagon.
The Big Wheel had been a Christmas gift from my Pepaw. The little red wagon was a gift from my Grandpa. Sure the Big Wheel was sporty, but Grandpa love the practicality of the little red wagon. I never found much use for the hauling capacity of the wagon, but none-the-less we had the sportscar and the pick-up truck at our disposal.
Eric and I never had much use for the wagon, but my cousins showed us how you could flip the handle around and sit in the wagon. Then one brother would run along, pushing the wagon while the other brother sat in the wagon using the handle as a steering wheel.
You could push that wagon as much as you wanted but the Big Wheel seemed to have performance edge both because of it's lower suspension and because the drive-train didn't disengage when your brother's hands came off your back. Now that our cousins showed us that the wagon could be of some use, Eric and I took them a half block down the street to an intersection.
At that intersection a cross-street climbs a small (by Virginia standards) hill. When I was a kid this hill seemed as steep as a mountainside. We took the wagon a couple paces up the hill and then climbed on board. Now that my cousins showed us how to ride the wagon, we showed them how to ride down a hill. The wagon gave a pretty terrifying ride, picking up speed quickly as it came downhill.
We took turns riding the wagon and standing in the street to catch each other as we came down the hill. Now if you know anything at all about the Wargo clan, you know that they love speed. That's probably one reason my cousin John Wargo still works around fast cars in his Custom Shop. Being from Virginia, Eric and I respect the hills and we knew better than to go too far up that hill for a ride down.
But Jamie must have been intoxicated on speed and silly from the wind in his hair from riding the wagon. Maybe he just didn't know better because kids from Illinois don't really see much in the way of hills. Jamie grabbed the Big Wheel and went past where we started the wagon. He went all the way up to the intersection of the next street.
We were all a little excited and scared. I was old enough to know better and I should have stopped him. But all of us wanted to see what was going to happen. Jamie saddled up in the Big Wheel and prepared to launch himself down the hill. Jamie gave us a thumbs-up and steeled his resolve. John and Eric and I got ready to catch him when he came down the hill.
Jamie placed his feet on the Big Wheel pedals and then rocked back a quarter of a turn. Then for dramatic effect he peeled out. The hard plastic front wheel rotated a bit for catching traction and he was off. He pedaled across the intersection and then hit the top of the hill at a full gallop.
As the nose of the Big Wheel dropped down below eye level, Jamie felt the wind rush through his hair. He probably thought saw God for a second and his eyes sparkled with angel dust as he grinned from ear to ear. My brother and I were Virginia natives, so we knew that you never let the Big Wheel pick up too much speed. Jamie didn't know or didn't care. Soon that big wheel was going faster than his legs.
There was no stopping this thing now.
The pedals were rotating like machine and his feet were up in the air as he blew past me. I whipped around and saw him weave between John and Eric like a sportscar on Big Sur in a commercial. The three of us made half-hearted attempts to slow him down, but he was going too fast now. The die was cast.
As Jamie crossed into the intersection my heart pounded. This hill went on for several streets, so he was only going to pick up more speed and end up in a rough neighborhood if he continued on. But Jamie made a piloting decision at the spur of that moment. The Big Wheel cut diagonally across the street and headed directly toward a curb.
When Jamie plowed into the curb, the Big Wheel bit the concrete and the back-end lifted up. He was launched into the air with the Big Wheel (now in two pieces) flipping end over end behind him. He mostly cleared the chainlink fence on the other side of the sidewalk. The top of the fence raked his face as he tumbled like a rag doll into the yard. The Big bounced impotently off of the fence and the Wheel landed in the yard alongside a motionless Jamie.
The three of us went running up to him with tears in our eyes.
"JAMIE!" I called out, but he didn't move.
The yard where Jamie lay was owned by the kind of old dude who shakes his fist at kids like us as he tells us to scram. He had just built that fence for the express purpose of keeping kids like us out of his lawn. So Eric and and I pulled up at the fence line. Little John went running into the yard to grab his brother and then we followed.
We all tugged at Jamie and he blinked and groaned. His face was bloody and his shirt was torn, but he shook the cobwebs from his mind and laughed in pain. We picked up the pieces of our Big Wheel and threw Jamie up on our shoulders to walk him home. He was scratched up and hurting, but not really injured.
Now, I'll just let you guess what we did with Jamie and John a couple of years later when they came down in the Winter, but I will give you two clues.
- Sled-riding is a just little more challenging on a tree-covered Virginia mountain than it is on Illinois pancake.
- Sleds don't fare much better against trees than Big Wheels against concrete curbs.
Every memory has a lesson. That's why we choose to remember that memory. The lessons for me from this are too personal to share.
Jamie's gone now. We miss him.
For more information or to set up an appointment call Nesbitt Realty at
(703)765-0300.
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Jamie placed his feet on the Big Wheel pedals and then rocked back a quarter of a turn. Then for dramatic effect he peeled out. The hard plastic front wheel rotated a bit for catching traction and he was off. He pedaled across the intersection and then hit the top of the hill at a full gallop.
As the nose of the Big Wheel dropped down below eye level, Jamie felt the wind rush through his hair. He probably thought saw God for a second and his eyes sparkled with angel dust as he grinned from ear to ear. My brother and I were Virginia natives, so we knew that you never let the Big Wheel pick up too much speed. Jamie didn't know or didn't care. Soon that big wheel was going faster than his legs.
There was no stopping this thing now.
The pedals were rotating like machine and his feet were up in the air as he blew past me. I whipped around and saw him weave between John and Eric like a sportscar on Big Sur in a commercial. The three of us made half-hearted attempts to slow him down, but he was going too fast now. The die was cast.
As Jamie crossed into the intersection my heart pounded. This hill went on for several streets, so he was only going to pick up more speed and end up in a rough neighborhood if he continued on. But Jamie made a piloting decision at the spur of that moment. The Big Wheel cut diagonally across the street and headed directly toward a curb.
When Jamie plowed into the curb, the Big Wheel bit the concrete and the back-end lifted up. He was launched into the air with the Big Wheel (now in two pieces) flipping end over end behind him. He mostly cleared the chainlink fence on the other side of the sidewalk. The top of the fence raked his face as he tumbled like a rag doll into the yard. The Big bounced impotently off of the fence and the Wheel landed in the yard alongside a motionless Jamie.
The three of us went running up to him with tears in our eyes.
"JAMIE!" I called out, but he didn't move.
The yard where Jamie lay was owned by the kind of old dude who shakes his fist at kids like us as he tells us to scram. He had just built that fence for the express purpose of keeping kids like us out of his lawn. So Eric and and I pulled up at the fence line. Little John went running into the yard to grab his brother and then we followed.
We all tugged at Jamie and he blinked and groaned. His face was bloody and his shirt was torn, but he shook the cobwebs from his mind and laughed in pain. We picked up the pieces of our Big Wheel and threw Jamie up on our shoulders to walk him home. He was scratched up and hurting, but not really injured.
Now, I'll just let you guess what we did with Jamie and John a couple of years later when they came down in the Winter, but I will give you two clues.
