Hathaway Hill

A Sunday Driver is defined as a slow and leisurely driver who appears to be sightseeing and enjoying the view, holding up traffic in the process. Dad was definitely NOT a Sunday Driver six days a week. He definitely WAS one on Sunday.
We took a lot of Sunday drives when I was a kid. If there had been any kind of happening in the area, we drove to see it. I swear I remember seeing the crashed plane NW of Corning during WWII. But when I look up the old Adams County Free Press online and see that it happened in June of 1944, I doubt that I remember it as I was only seven months old.
I do have a memory of coming over a hill and seeing a flooded river going over the road and a bridge. Mom told me in later years that I was just old enough to talk because I said, "Somabitch. Let's get outta' here!" (My fear of crossing bridges might come from then.)
I absolutely remember driving near Clarinda to view tornado damage. Also a Sunday drive in northern Missouri when Dad decided to follow an old dirt road for miles even after Mom told him not to. The road ended at someone's farm home and we had to backtrack all those miles. (I just realized why I love taking off on dirt roads.)
Many of our Sunday drives took us to the same areas - places where my Dad lived as a child. We would drive slowly along as he pointed out Uncle Jim's place and where Ikey Arbuckle's lived and the Day Place where he had lived, even though those two homesteads were long gone. We would follow the road north to where it crossed the Middle Nodaway River and curved west. Dad always commented about the good farm ground along the bottom and then we came to Hathaway Hill.
It was many years before I learned the correct name was Hathaway Hill. I always heard it as Halfway Hill. That may even be what Dad called it. Curious child that I was, I wanted to know why it was called Halfway Hill. One of the explanations was that it was so steep, Model A's could only get halfway up it before the gas ran back in the tank and the cars stalled. Supposedly the only way they could get to the top was to back up the hill.
There were a lot of coal mines in the area. Mom would point to a barely discernible track back through the trees and tell us her cousin, Delmar Haley, had worked in a mine back there when he was only 14 years old. He was the eldest of nine children and had to work to help out the family. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a kid underground in the dark digging out coal. It was awful.
I did learn in later years that there was a coal mine known as the Hathaway Mine for the owner, Robert Hathaway. The hill was west of the mine which could explain its name or perhaps the family's home was near there, too.
It has been awhile since I was last on Hathaway Hill. The road was still dirt. It was a great place to hunt rocks, which is what I was doing. The hill isn't as steep now or maybe my perception has changed from that of a child.
Hathaway Hill doesn't appear on any maps, but if you want to find it, drive north on Chestnut in Douglas Twp; cross the Middle Nodaway River and hang a left; west about three-fourths a mile you'll find yourself on Hathaway Hill.