| Poplar is a level street that runs in front of our house and intersects Danger Hill, forming the corner of our yard. Jeff and I rolled our Schwinn bicycles to the edge of Poplar, facing down the slope. Someone signaled, “Go!” In a bicycle race, the launch is crucial. Standing up on the pedals, you put all your weight into that first resistant down stroke. The other pedal rotates up solidly underfoot, where you push it down & around again smoothly as sprocket pulls chain taut and you roll forward, pumping faster until you are flying past blurred houses and shrubs and the downhill momentum carries you faster than you can pump your own legs. I was ahead of Jeff until my front tire hit a piece of gravel. My handlebars wobbled dangerously. I succeeded in not wiping out, but it cost me some speed. Jeff bolted past me, face gripped in G-Force, hair blowing wildly, looking eagerly to the big finish. Our friends were diligent enough in halting vehicles that approached Danger Hill from the side roads, but none of us thought about someone backing out of a driveway. You would expect that anyone leaving their house in broad daylight could see two shiny Schwinns glinting in the sun. Nevertheless, from the next-to-the-last house on the right, old half-blind retiree Mort Fincham backed his black, whale-shaped 1948 Packard onto the road. Jeff’s reaction reflected the lightning synapses in his brain. For a split second, he instinctively hit the back-pedal brake, but realized he was going too fast to stop in time. He tried to swerve around the front of the big car, but now the old man had stopped backing up, shifted into DRIVE, and commenced his forward turn. Jeff slammed on the brake, skidded sideways, and leaned away from the Packard. A trail of sparks followed the bike underneath the car as one pedal and both handlebar tips rasped against the asphalt. Jeff, his bicycle, and his shower of sparks slid under the car just behind the right front tire. Still advancing, the Packard’s left rear tire pinned one of the bicycle rims to the ground. The trapped wheel became an axis, causing the rest of the bike to swing out on the opposite side of the car like a switchblade, carrying Jeff with it. |
| An excerpt from Tamper Chapter Four 1960s |
| In the small town of Hansburg, Virginia, it is a tradition and a rite of passage wreak semi-permanent damage on the soft tissue of your body in a quest to conquer Danger Hill. The name comes from two street signs, joined together at the top of Third Street, where drivers tended to scrape their oil pans and mufflers when they took the hill without slowing down. The town put up a warning that was intended to say, "Danger: Hill," and the street lived up to it's name. |
| The real Jeff, circa 1966 |