Nope, not my hill.

If it were, I’d be king of it.

But what in the Sam Hill am I saying?   I wasn’t worth a hill of beans at that game back when I was a kid.  In fact I hated it.   That’s what hill’s all about, after all, that and growing old, and getting away from it all.

But let’s go briefly back to Haines Hill in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.  According to local historians it was home to seven generations of Haines for about 200 years.

Unfortunately, none of them related to me, that I know of anyway.

There go the dreams of being king of the hill.

Remember that game?  Just find a spot, yes, it could be a hill, and dare anyone to knock you off of it.  That old school yard game has made it into the current video game world and also into the title of an animated TV show (never did understand the popularity of that one).  And the same meaning is found in warfare (‘taking the hill’) and dominant architecture (the castle on the hill, the house on the hill).

This is a political-free zone so we will not discuss The Hill in Washington.

“Over the hill” has some pretty negative connotations of course, especially when related to age, but it can also mean get out of jail.  And the simple  “it’s all downhill from here” can go either way too.  Things will either continue to get worse, or, on the bright side, things will be easier.  Take your pick.

Speaking of take your pick: the origin of Sam Hill, as in what the Sam Hill was that, using the phrase as a euphemism for Hell, has several possible beginnings:  H.L. Mencken suggested it came from the name of the devil in a German opera performed in 1825; another source says it came from the name of a store owner in Arizona with a diverse inventory;  New England Magazine speculated in 1889 that it came from a politician of that name in Connecticut; another report says it came from a Michigan surveyor  Samual W. Hill because of his legendary use of foul language,  and a final possible origin is attributed to a general by the name of Samuel Ewing Hill sent by the governor of Kentucky in 1887 to find out what was going on with the Hatfield and McCoy feuding.

Competing quoters:  “It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top”—Arnold Bennet (English writer, died 1931) and “It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top”–Henry Ward Beecher (American clergyman who died in 1887).

And then there’s that depressing Nelson Mandella fellow:  “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

And I suppose you will find, as I did, that none of this is worth a hill of beans  (Beans aren’t worth much.  A hill of them is just the way they used to be planted, several seeds in a small mound of earth.)