January
27, 2020
Greetings from
the frozen smile,
When your
cheeks are wet and numb and it’s so cold you can feel all your teeth and your
feet have become solid blocks, and there is chunks of snow frozen to your
mismatched mittens and you are yelling at your sister to wait up, WAIT UP!
In the rafters
of our garage, along with an assortment of things rarely used, was our toboggan. This work of art was probably purchased at
the local Yankee Store, which was like a Kmart without the fancy ambiance. In between seasons, it rested amidst the broken
hose and old eves troughs and outdated Christmas décor, collecting a scrim of
dust and mouse droppings designed to make it go faster on snow.
My Dad would
wrestle it down from its perch, shaving years off its life and his. He would tie it on top of the Buick Vista Cruiser
using the same optimistic knots he applied in securing our Christmas tree, and
then yell at us kids, for the last time, to get in the car.
Kearsley Park
is a 100-year-old green space creasing the middle of our factory town. Sixty
acres of room to explore. Baseball,
concerts, live theater, playgrounds, fireworks, ice skating and a giant
swimming pool. A century of teenagers smooching and little kids poking in the
mud and learning to drive in Safetyville and watching the burning of the
Christmas trees. And in the winter, the bowl of Kearsley Park formed the
perfect sledding hill.
The
preparation for sledding took at least twice as long as the actual event. Putting on two layers of sweat socks and
forcing your feet into your Keds, and then wrapping them in empty Wonder Bread
bags, designed by NASA to keep moisture out.
Then locking both feet in your Snow Boots. Mine had the locking metal hasps that were
designed to shred flesh during sledding crashes.
My sisters and
I would wedge into the station wagon, with whatever dog we owned and any
neighbor kid who could get his snowsuit on in time, and we would make our way
to the park, already sweating inside the layers of whatever clothes our Mom
could force over our pajamas, which is what we used for the base layer in that
era.
We would
bounce into the parking lot at the park, the pavilion already filled with kids
falling down on the ice rink, and waddle to the hill, leaving Dad behind,
cursing the frozen hemp knots on the toboggan.
We would gaze at the white expanse, rimmed with trees, dotted with kids
already swooshing down the hills. Felt
the wonderful excitement well up because the day is never ever going to end.
We owned a wooden sled, fitted with metal rails and the
little wooden bar that was somehow supposed to ‘steer’ it. Every run after the first one was designed to
make the trips down the hill more dangerous.
Go down backwards. Pile your
sister on your back. Pile two sisters. Stand up and surf down the hill. Stand up with two sisters and a new kid
sitting in front. You knew when you had
gone too far if something was bleeding as you dragged the sled back up the
hill.
When our Dad (finally) got the toboggan free from the Vista
Cruiser he would drag it clunking to the hill and line up as many kids as could
fit on it, plus one more, plus one dragging behind, and fling us down the
hill. We would fight to stay on until we
made it to the bottom and then there was always someone who tipped the whole
thing over. Was not me. Was not!
Some mischievous parents had the idea that what this fun
needed was more peril. So, a toboggan
slide was erected at the top of the hill.
It was a precarious perch. A daring
soul, without benefit of legal counsel, would drag his toboggan up rickety stairs
to a narrow platform, and then, and I’m not making this up, urge his kids to
get on the contraption. And with no more
warning than ‘Geronimo’ (no offense to my indigenous brothers, it was a
different time) launch his beloved prodigy down the chute and onto the hill at
speeds that only be described as ‘eye watering’. Same parent who told us not to run with
scissors or climb in Mr. Berry’s tree.
Some runs were for style, others for speed, others for
distance. Everyone aimed to make it as
far as Gilkey Creek, which if you were not from the city you called ‘Gilkey Crick’. If you made it that far, you could find out
how thick the ice was.
When we couldn’t get on the sled or toboggan, we rode pieces
of cardboard. Bounce down the icy hill,
then stagger back up, dragging our tattered conveyance, sometimes clunked by
other kids still coming down. Sometimes
we would get on the back of a bigger kid and, against all laws of physics, ride
him to the bottom of the hill. When we
were too exhausted to climb up the snow runs we would stomp up the stairs
fitted next to the hill. Once in a while we would sled down the steps too, just
to see if we could chip a tooth.
Fly down, trudge up, fly down, throw a snowball at a kid coming
down, fall down, stomp up the hill, pile on a sled and do it again. Again.
Until the snot froze on your face and you couldn’t feel your fingers and
you were starving to death and maybe our Dad would take us to Kewpies even
though he’s not made of money. Dad would
try to get approximately the same number of kids in the Vista Cruiser that he
came with, and turn the heat on ‘HI’ and haul us back to Chandler Street.
When you burst into the house, wet and noisy, bringing in snow and mud
and a neighbor kid, and stand puddling in the kitchen everyone yelling at once
that you should have seen me and about how much fun that was. Mom holding our baby brother, making hot
chocolate on the stove top, telling us not to leave our boots on the stairs and
I mean it, and put your wet things…. .not sure what she said after that.
‘Member?
Hope
this finds you time traveling,
David
Copyright
© 2020 David Smith
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