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Gravity Hill
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
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15 gravity hill On a narrow road in the map’s blank gap between Shellsburg and New Paris, PA, someone spray-painted START at the foot of a hill, and END halfway up. Mom drove to START, threw it into neutral, and we drifted up, slowly gaining momentum. Let’s try it the other way, she said, turning around by an unpainted barn; a chained black dog stared at us but didn’t bark. The antiques dealer in town couldn’t explain it, said, Just try for yourself. A lady who’d seen something like it in New Brunswick— her whole tour bus rolling up a hill— guessed a huge natural magnet underground. I thought we’d all been fooled by an illusion, but Mom just laughed and said she prefers drifting backward, the way women used to foxtrot, propelled across dance floors by handsome men in uniforms: Somewhere beyond the sea Somewhere waitin’ for me their blind, graceful gliding, a delight as quaint as six pressed glass sandwich plates or the saucers with hand-painted grapes she bought for herself, saying, These will be yours some day. At 62, she seems younger than I, who find old plates pretty but useless. So at the end of the day I had nothing to show for myself except this image of how my mother will die: going backward, happy, with wide-open eyes. ...