When I was back up in Teaneck working this past July, I stayed up there for a couple of weeks straight, crashing back at my mother's house (even though I'm 31!) It was a very enjoyable time. A lot of memories come rushing back to you, seemingly channeled through all five of your senses. I found myself walking in my mother's neighborhood near Teaneck High School. Here is an overhead map of the High School, incase you are not familiar with the area.
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We lived about a block and a half away from the high school. When I first moved to Teaneck, in the summer of 1985, I was eight years old. As an eight year old, my primary means of transportation was my bicycle. I met the kids in my neighborhood. I quickly found out that the local kids took their bikes to this place called "The Trails".
"The Trails" was actually just one trail. It was a dirt trail that ran parallel to Route 4 (West-East) on the embankment of Route 4, on the opposite side of the high school. Here is a view of where the trails start on Margaret Street. If you looked directly to the left from this position, you'd see the start of the trails.
And here is the aforementioned look to the left. This is the start of the trails. We have turned 90 degrees left from the previous picture.
As an aside, as you start walking down this trail, if you look to your right, towards Route 4, you see Route 4 in the background, with an area that had a bunch more garbage than this picture caught. I think high school kids hang out there at lunchtime and after school, and do whatever kids do.)
Anyway, if you started riding your bicycle from Margaret Street, you could pick up a lot of steam if you were heading east from Margaret towards the next block, which was Alicia Street. It is a relatively straight path, slightly downhill, with little bumps. Here's what it looks like.
Just after Alicia, the path took a turn to the right, and there was a huge hole which was perfectly shaped to ride your bike into and jump out of the other side. When we were kids it was about... (hopefully the lens of retrospection won't fail me here)... eight to ten feet deep, and fairly wide. Like a mini crater. I was excited to see the dip again. Alas, when I made my way to Alicia, it wasn't there at all. The area there where the quick descent started was there, but overgrown.
And while the ground still was lower there, it was inexplicably filled with a bunch of logs! Here's the picture.
As it did when we were kids, the trail still petered off slowly after the dip, eventually fading out on the block past Alicia, which was Stasia street.
I was kind of sad that the dip was not there, and I wonder if it was filled intentionally after my childhood to keep kids out of there. It is town property, I'd assume.
As I strolled down this path to take the photos for this blog post, a couple of old guys were hanging out in their backyard at the end of Alicia which abutted the start of the jump, and when I was lining up and snapping photos, they started eyeing me suspiciously. They asked who I worked for - town or county? I said, "Neither." They continued to stare, expecting an explanation, but I just smiled cryptically and walked away.
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