When I was a boy, the earth was flat

Although I was born in the mid-20C, I grew up in a triple-decker universe–just like folks in the ancient Near East. When I was a boy, the world was still flat. It's amazing how much the world has changed in my lifetime. I'm suffering from future shock! The neighborhood where I grew up had all the basics of the triple-decker universe you see diagrammed in reconstructions of Biblical cosmography. Or so we’re told.

My parents had a waterfront property. The frontyard was on the old lakebed, before the lake was lowered in 1916.

The house itself was originally a log beach cabin, although we added extensions. The back of the house was up against the old shoreline. We had a well, with a pump house. We used well water.

Before the lake was lowered, there was a river connecting the lake to the sea. The river dried up after the lake was lowered by nine feet.

So we were on sea level–at the bottom of a hill. The hill rose about 500 feet above and behind us. The hill was high enough above sea level that it sometimes snowed on the summit when it rained down below.

The lake and two ravines formed natural boundaries. So it was a naturally self-contained world. A world within a world.

One ravine had a stream that emptied into the lake. The stream ran down the hill. Before the stream was diverted, it fed a pond in some woods behind the football field of my old junior high school, up on the hill. In the summer of ’71, I collected some tadpoles from the pond.

The stream ran underground before resurfacing at the bottom of the ravine. That was part of the local watershed.

From the hilltop you could see mountains in the distance. Although the mountains were actually 20-30 times higher than the hill, when you see distant mountains from the top of a hill, you seem to be at eyelevel with the mountains.

From the top of the hill there was a clear horizon line. I appeared to be at the center of the world. Looking down at the world from the top of the world. Looking at the circumference from the center. 

All in all, this is a compact version of the cosmography which liberals impute to the Bible. I myself could write a novel or series of short stories set in this triple-decker universe. I could be the Hero, who goes on a quest. Who goes up the mountain, and returns. Upward and downward, outward and inward. A classic mythopoetic motif.

Yet there’s nothing mythical about my old neighborhood.