Any story about my Greenfield Days and Baby Boomer friends must begin with The Hill — a hallowed place in my life and not unlike similar places I’m sure, in the lives of my fellow Boomers. This is an introduction. The Hill will make many return appearances in this blog, but it was important for you to get to know this place.
The Hill, located in the schoolyard of West Ridge Elementary, was a gathering point for all the kids who lived on the streets that radiated out from the school. Greenfield Road was one of those streets. The schoolyard and The Hill that rose just 30 yards beyond the entrance were but a few minutes walk from our house.
The schoolyard in which The Hill sat was roughly 400 yards on each of its sides forming a square (at least that’s how I remember it), and was carved out of a cornfield and farmland that was common in the area in the 1950s. The suburbs hadn’t yet completed their sprawl. The Hill sat in the southwest quadrant of the schoolyard. It was formed during the construction of West Ridge — from the earth removed during the digging of the school’s foundation.
Our family in 1963 was like so many others who were moving from the city to the suburbs. After moving in my brother and I soon ventured down to the schoolyard to find it teeming with activity every day — mostly involving kids our age, which for me was six and for my brother seven (soon to be eight).
Activity on and around The Hill through the years in many ways would become a metaphor for the lives of Baby Boomers and the society we affected. A spike of kids and activities for several years. The baseball and football games involved so many kids that if you arrived late to the “choosing up” you’d be out of luck for playing until someone had to go home. This was followed by an eerie silence of activity once the Boomers grew and moved on. West Ridge even closed for a while.
The Hill will always be hallowed ground for me. It was that place around which my brother and I first played with our new friends, the place I kissed a girl for the first time, where we sledded in the winter (and eventually where I would take my children to do the same), where we teed off on our own “golf course,” played so many games of baseball and football, where the hippies of the late sixties camped out that one summer until our toughest guy beat their toughest guy (a story of its own).
The Hill. I know every Boomer has a similar place in their memory — the tribal gathering place of our young lives.
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