The Trolley

Growing up, my siblings and I, all benefited from the creative, and only rarely evil (remember “hypnotizing” grasshoppers?), genius of our oldest brother, Braden, who always had us involved in something that completely absorbed us.  Sometimes it was a play, or building a village of huts in the nearby empty lot, organizing or overthrowing the village government, preparing for and engaging in battle with the kids down the street, etc.  Our busy and idyllic summers flew by and we always mourned their passing;  however, we weren’t totally out of luck when the weather turned cold.  We were fortunate enough to have a large, unfinished basement. 

If you didn’t mind spiders or a surprise encounter with one of Braden’s latest escaped pets it was a perfect playground for us.  There were two finished bedrooms (mine and Braden’s) and a bathroom, but the rest was all unpainted drywall, cement floors and wooden studs.  A primitive turf, bursting with potential for our active imaginations.   We rode bikes down there, strapped pillows onto our stomachs and rammed into each other on our roller skates, played hide and seek for hours.  We thought had everything, but that’s before we knew what we had been missing.  One year for Christmas (I think it was a Christmas gift, wasn’t it?) our parents surprised us with what we called our trolley. 

Something like this

We had to climb onto something (I think Mom’s old cedar chest?) with roller skates on to reach the trolley then grabbed on and rode it the length of the unfinished room where it gently sloped down enough for our skates to touch the cement floor and skate back to the other side of the room to get in line for the trolley.   We spent many, many hours down there perfecting our rides and collecting blisters from our skates and calluses from the trolley.   Now our basement was perfect.  That trolley was completely life-changing for us.   That’s a gift.  I would love to give my kids a gift like that for Christmas this year.  Any ideas?