Three Culvert Road

I took a ride down a memory road this evening. It's a real road (roads) that holds a bunch of memories for me.

At the end of our driveway, and up the side road that I used to just know as 'up around the bend', there were three culverts until the floods began coming and washed them away. One year, I don't know which one, the three culverts were washed out and replaced with a cement bridge. Today, the road still bears the name but I don't suppose those under forty or so would remember why it got its name.

The little pool of wate where the three culverts used to
empt

Tonight, as I set out for an evening ride, I turned up Three Culvert Road instead of biking up the county road to Lime Ridge as I normally do.

The first thing I came to was the bridge and the little pool of water where we used to spend so much time swimming. They wrecked the 'swimming hole' when they replaced the three culverts with a bridge. It's shallow now and the sewer treatment run-off from Lime Ridge makes alge grow and no one swims in the pond anymore.

I ride my bike silently over the bridge and the memories of three culverts that were the center of the summer for a bunch of kids 50 years ago.

Along Three Culvert Road, half-way between County S
and East Harris Road.

As I ride 'up around the bin' I remember a time when the road was gravel, before it was black-toped. I remember a day I drove an old truck, 1950, 51? Studebaker pickup truck up this road with a wild bull in the back rocking the truck and two neighborhood friends beside me practically rolling with laughter as we drove the bull back to the farm up the road from where it had escaped.

A sadder day happened off to the ditch on the right where my friend August pulled loose from her leash and was killed along this road. Up ahead on the left is a grove of pine trees. This is where a house once stood where my mother and her family lived for time. I remember seeing the foundation of the house, and a barn in the little valley to the left. This is only a half a mile from the farm where my dad grew up and where I live today.

This is along East Harris Road looking west toward the
Harris School. The play ground is completely covered
in trees.

As the sun set, Three Culvert Road had ended and I turned onto East Harris Road. I approached another grove of trees that hold a forest full of memories. On the left, hidden among the trees in the photo on the right, is Harris School. That was the school that I attended until 7th grade and where my mother, father, aunts & uncles, and grandfather went to school. I believe that even my daughters went to Harris School for a while as it became a kindergarten school before finally closing.

When I left from home tonight, I didn't know how much I would be able to ride. I fell off a building the day before and my left ankle was hurting pretty bad, but as I got on the bike and began to ride, it didn't hurt so much. I hadn't gone to the doctor because I never seem to get really hurt. As I passed Harris School, I thought about Billy Kruger, the farmer that lived next to the school and how we used to get him to stop his tractor and talk to us. I remembered how Billy had shoveled the road by-hand, all the half-mile out to highway G durring a bad snowstorm when we were kids!

When I got to Lime Ridge, my ankle didn't hurt much, so I didn't turn home, but headed out for the remainder of a 12-mile ride. It was nearly dark when I finished. Sandy had slipt off to bed and I went over 900 miles for the year! 910 to be exact...