Our drive was long and steep, and though paved, it provided lots of its own excitement. Sledding down the driveway was terrific, and if you were lucky you could make the left turn onto a snowy Mexico Lane and triple your ride down that steep road. If you were really up for record-setting you could pull your sled to the top of the mountain and ride down the ski slope that brother Fred made, then make the turn from the Barn Field onto the driveway, then adding in the Mexico Lane segment made it Olympic. I think I completed that three-phase ride just once.

But the driveway in summer was also good for thrills, rolling down in a wagon, or even on a large toy truck.

Another vivid memory is my mother driving us down that driveway in the WWII surplus jeep and having the brakes fail. She wisely turned to the steep bank on the right side, but then the jeep tottered there, about to fall over, when a visitor who was with us, I think one of the sons of the folks who sold us the house, jumped out and held the jeep from falling over. How that got resolved I don’t remember, nor whether that was the last stand for the jeep.

The other great jeep moment came when my mother drove us home from shopping, parked the jeep on the driveway, set the handbrake, and starting bringing groceries into the house. Somehow the brake failed and the jeep rolled briskly off the driveway and crash through the wall of the house into the living room. 

I was in the jeep, as I recall, but wasn’t injured; it was only about 20 foot roll, but enough to gain speed and knock out the old farmhouse frame, outer sheathing and inner wall. I think the corncobs used to insulate the walls were exposed.

I was not there when my father came home and my mother needed to greet him and explain the situation.

I think we covered the whole in the wall of the house with plastic and then my father and big brother Fred somehow rebuilt the wall, inside and out.

(Around this time we also covered the entire house with a layer of tar paper and big shingles to give it better insulation. Before that you could always feel wind coming through the walls.)

The next and oddest driveway-car incident happened one winter day when Mom again went shopping and parked the car, this being the infamous 37 Chevy, on the driveway which did have a light covering of snow.

My memory is that the cow got loose and went to rub against the car, which then sent the car sliding on the thin snow cover, down the driveway for about 40 feet, at which point it slid onto the back lawn and then off the lawn over a tumble down stone wall, down through the field and came to rest against a small tree, with the radio still playing. 

(This is one reason I always loved the Tom Wait song where he references the guy who “spun and he rolled, he hit a telephone pole, he died with the radio on”. Sure, the radio would still play, I saw that happen…)

My father and brother Fred went and got the tractor and tried mightily to pull the Chevy back out of the field. They made it pretty far, but could not get it up the slightly steeper way from below the barn up to the nice flat area up top. 

So the 37 Chevy stayed in the field for about a decade until after my father passed away and my mother hired a guy with a tow truck, a winch, and a long cable. He yanked the car out of the field, put it on a truck and hauled it away, or so I was told.

That car had been great fun for years, though. We would sit in it and pretend we were flying a plane or driving. That only worked in the early spring or later fall before the car was taken over by wasps. 

When there was enough snow Fred or Dad would plow the driveway with the tractor, later my job, but there was often just enough snow or ice that the only way to deal with it was to get out and shovel it, and spread sand.

I can see brother Dan and I, happily huddled by the fireplace, with my father commanding us to get out there and clear the driveway better so that my mother would be able to drive up the driveway when she got home.

And then there were times we would arrive home, going gingerly slow down Mexico Lane, when Dad would stop the car about 50 feet from the base of the driveway, shift the car into first or second gear, and then practically pop the clutch to send us down as fast as we could go, hoping to make it all the way up the driveway. If we didn’t make it he might try again, which was scary, or worse, make us shovel and sand the whole damn driveway.