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.