Yesterday, I picked up my sister from the railway station at our home village. While waiting for her train to arrive, I wandered around the railway station (which is nowadays just a point where the train stops and a lonely railway staff person waits through her shift in front of a telephone). I came across a “hill”, at least what is left of it from earlier days. In fact, it is a ramp used to load / unload railway container cars many, many years back. I hope you get the idea from the kind of “hill” I am talking about from the picture here – there is a slope, you see?
I remembered our adrenaline-pumping activities from our childhood. I was five our six years old when we detected some cable reels, left behind by the railway workers. Those reels where made from wood, two wooden disks as the bottom and top, connected by a core made from wooden laths screwed in a tubular shape between the two disks. When there were some laths missing, a hiding space opened up inside the tube, making room for a small kid to fit in. The drawing here gives the idea I hope:
Of course I had to try… I squeezed into the middle tube and tried to firmly lock myself into position. Then, my brother gave the cable reel a push to roll down the hill, myself folded inside the tube…
It hurt like hell – but the sparks and stars I saw were really beautiful…
To give this game an appropriate name, let’s call it DIY merry-go-round.
Leave a Reply