Riding Road Graders and Sleds- Mimosa Lake, NJ, 1960’s

When I was little, we lived on a one lane, white sandy road in the Pine Barrens named for my family as Watson’s Way. It looped around the back side of our small lake, through the Piney woods and scrub oaks, eventually joining with another road to form a figure eight around two lakes. Towards the end of summer each year, the little one lane track would get all humped up with sand in the middle, with the wheel tracks lower on each side. It had to be scraped down and leveled or the cars would drag bottom and get stuck in the soft sand. The curves were especially tricky to maneuver when the sand got deep.  Flooring the gas was not at all helpful, it just dug you in deeper. For some reason, the Mayor of the township was the guy who would come out to grade it. I have never known why it was him that came out, as he didn’t live nearby. Maybe he was a land owner or something. He lived way off in town in a huge old farm house and held a big community Easter Egg Hunt there each year.

We learned to ride our bikes on that sandy road, which wasn’t easy, but the falling wasn’t too bad in the soft sand. Way better than falling on gravel or black top. We played Wiffle ball in the middle of the road too, as there was hardly ever any cars besides ours on it. Our bikes had fat tires and no gears back then, with the old style back pedaling brakes. After it rained, the sand was firmer, darker colored and easier to ride on. When the weather had been really dry for a while though, it was almost impossible to pedal fast enough to stay upright. My mom had to carry a shovel in the back of the car in case we needed to dig ourselves out. Old floor mats came in handy too.

So, when the center hump got to too high, Eeph (short for Ephraim) would come out on his old tractor pulling a box grader/ scraper. This was not like a highway department grader blade but more like a giant box type cheese grater. The blade on the bottom would scrape up the sand and it would rise up in the open topped box, the pile growing higher and higher, as he traveled on down the road. When it would get so high it started spilling, he would drive it to some low area or a washed out place nearby and tip it out. It was fascinating to watch but the best times were when he let us sit on top of the pile as it grew. I don’t think this was something I ever mentioned to my parents, and I can’t imagine they would have approved, but it sure was fun.

Another dubiously safe pastime was when Dad would hook the toboggan up to the back of the station wagon and pull all four of us kids down the road in the snow. He’d be fishtailing and we’d be yelling for him to go faster and slinging ourselves off on purpose. It was a blast. Come to think of it, Jeff was game for this kind of thing back in the 90’s when he pulled about twelve of us uphill on sleds behind his Isuzu. It was our annual Presidents Day weekend caving trip out in Franklin, WV. There was a good snow on the ground so we had all brought our sleds. The first sled in line was tied to the car with a rope, and the rest were all holding on to the bent up legs of the person in front of us. We whip snaked up that forest service road way faster than we ever slid down it. He’d pull us up, we’d sled down, he’d pull us back up again. That was even more fun than the toboggan and we were mostly all in our thirty’s and forties then. Well, except for Ackie, who was probably in his sixties at least. He rode his sled down the hill sitting upright like the Norelco shaver commercial on TV at Christmas. You have to be ready to enjoy whatever fun comes along.

Wendy lee, writing at edgewisewoods.com