Suicide Hill

When I was a little kid–oh, oh, here we go–we made do with the “toys” that Mother Nature gave us. Since I was a little kid in an urban environment, 66th and Haverford in Philly, toys were frequently trees, hills, pot holes, walls, dog defecating grounds, abandoned beer bottles, and various swearing neighbors, usually male Italo-American, who referred to us as ” you goddamma kits.” We’d scheme up new ways to combine these objects into some sort of race game, usually, sometimes accompanied by violence and kidnapping, but often just a lot of screaming and shouting until it got dark enough to get called home. Or just knew it was time. We usually had colorful nicknames for people and objects, especially oddly shaped characters with names like Hotsy, Ax-Face, or Monkey-Mother. By their markings you would know them, sort of like Lumpy in “Leave it To Beaver.” They all made sense, and even if hurtful by contemporary standards (what wasn’t), beat Hell out of Alexander, Julio, Donald, or Leonard. “C’mon Hotsy, you dimwit! Your ugly sister is calling you.” Cruel, but, alas, efficient. “Mr. Man, you left your car door open,” usually shouted to some poor shlub half a block away as some subset of vandals made off with some what were otherwise worthless possessions. The fun was in watching the guy turn around and come sprinting back toward us, whereupon we’d drop his stuff in the street and scatter. I don’t recall anyone getting nabbed, or, Thank God, any coronaries. There were always vaguely older adults (probably in their 30s) red faced and shouting, usually some novel obscenity which we rapidly appropriated for our own use. This was how street kids got educated in profanity. I’ll spare you details.

There were two principal forms of diversion, only one of which veered into the truly dangerous. That involved Suicide Hill, about which more later. The other was the around the block opposite-way relay, which was a killer too.

Picture 55 Buicks and two-tone Pontiacs. Here you have Suicide Hill. Stopping is optional

Suicide Hill (aka Media Street): Stopping is Optional, Dude. Photoshop in a ’55 tu-tone Buick and you are there. The Overbook IADC was to the left. Triangle Park and St Callistus are at the end of the line.

The Parcourse for Working Class Kids: A Stitch in Your Side is Better Than a Knife in Your Back

Let’s start with the round the block opposite way relay. Normally, this involved two kids who detested each other. The starting point was usually around 66th and Haverford, although it could be on Haverford Ave itself. Somebody with a cap gun was the starter. Bang! You’re off. Now, the two reprobates proceeded in the opposite direction, usually, stupidly, at full clip. The idea, of course, was to see who got back to the starting point first. Whoever lost got beat up. Now Media Street, if you observe the photo above, was a bit of a hill. So naturally, the kid running up 66th Street and hanging a left on Media got the benefit of the downhill. The other kid was screwed. Mostly, you picked the fat out of shape kid to get screwed so you could wack him when he lost. Nice, huh?

The run along Edgmore Road was flat, Democratic but absolutely disgusting. A good part of it ran behind the Overbook Italian American Club (no longer in existence, since they all became Republicans with Reagan). There were bocce courts up there, and the old Sicilians used throw their Di Nobili cigar stubs over the wall, where they came to rest as sort of turd-like objects. At the same time, every dog in Haddington used the same stretch as a toilet. And, finally, the club stacked its empty beer bottle cases out there behind a fence.

Now, you know, this delightful blend of stuff sat out there all day, just cooking away in the hot sun attracting flies. Man, even if you had gotten the downhill boost, you had to confront this stuff–no one ever thought to detour into the street, probably because you would have had to dodge traffic. Anyway, if you were the kid condemned to the uphill climb, you had to negotiate the picturesque wasteland of Edgemore Road. On a hot day, in the the Summer, in the evening, the stale beer, dogshit and Di Nobili cigar butts made for a cloud of gas hanging there that could have violated the Geneva Convention against the use of chemical weapons. You were running, so you couldn’t really hold your breath. And if you inhaled, well, you probably wanted to hurl because it stunk to Kingdom Come. So you’re running along, probably hot and sweating, with the urge to wretch, only to confront the uphill portion of Suicide Hill, where you’d probably get a stitch. Where you either stopped, cried, threw up, or continued down 66th Street to the finish line. There you were probably greeted by the other runners runner yelling “You lost, Suckah”. No shit. Then a hail of fists, rocks, dirt bombs and God only knows what else came raining down on you.

And you wonder why that neighborhood produced a lot of recruits to the Marine Corps? Even the winner had been lucky to survive, and if you were all having a great day, a Red Car cruising up Haverford Avenue (Philly’s finest) would slow down to observe the festivities, maybe hurl and insult or two, drive away laughing. Why would anyone do it? Look, you think you had a choice: if you lost you got beat up. If you refused, you got beat up. I always figured you got beat worse if the other hoodlums were fresh, although they could get pretty stoked waiting for the loser to appear. I must admit, I was the loser more than once. I knew what was coming and usually picked up a board or a bottle or something with which to defend myself until some adult came screaming out of one of our homes yelling we were all going to end up in Reform School. Right. In my case. Presentation BVM and Devon Prep. Bonnner and Tommy More were worse.

But the real “fun” began when we had “race day” on Suicide Hill. To this day, I have no idea how someone didn’t get killed or seriously injured–or if they did, I managed to miss it. Now, none of us had bikes, I think, but we had wagons, those scooter things with two wheels, and a few other cobbled together contraptions with wheels. You got up to the starting point at 66th and Media and aimed down toward Triangle Park. If you had surplus kids, you stationed them to do watch duty at the Stop Signs at Media and Edgemore, which would basically give you at shot at the Haddington LeMans race if they waved you through (there was this one homicidal kid who went to Dobbins Vo Tech who routinely tried to wave people into oncoming traffic. I remember hearing he didn’t make it though Nam, which didn’t exactly surprise me. He probably got fragged).

Honestly, I was usually too damn scared to race down Suicide Hill, but others weren’t. Oh. My. God.You either got shoved forward shoved at the top of the Hill or kicked off yourself and you were off down Media Street. Everyone screaming, kids running into each other (or into parked cars), or flipping when they hit a crack in the street (or a not-quite level manhole cover). Since the turn out for this was usually sort of akin to a pre-adolescent drag race, kids from as far as Lansdowne Avenue would come and watch. Join in, sometime halfway through the race. If you had to suddenly stop at the stop sign, chances are you got creamed, because you had to head for a curb or a car, or a hydrant or some damn immovable object. I do remember one occasion where a couple of the participants ended up in Saint Callistus Parish parking lot where I think they took out a couple of Knights of Columbus who retaliated rather swiftly. No sense of humor in a 1957 Catholic Pillar of the Church. I think I remember a bunch of kids getting in hot water for that particular misadventure, but since I just stood around and waited, eh….

Now, imagine trying to pull that off in 2025. This was nearly 70 years ago. No supervision. No safety equipment. No Neighborhood Watch. I know some kids got banged up sometimes, but I broke MY ARM playing football in grade school, not racing down Suicide Hill. Think about it. You were safer involved in disorganized city mayhem than you were in organized CYO football.

Are you surprised? It figures. We had our own skins in the game. The wannabe “NFL Coaches” didn’t. And, of course, the Catholic Church watched over us benignly.