Tuesday, December 7, 2021 Snow

Remember that scene on the train in “White Christmas” when they start singing about snow?

“It won’t be long before we’ll all be there with snow
Snow
I want to wash: my hands, my face and hair with snow
Snow
I long to clear a path and lift a spade of snow
Oh, to see a great big man entirely made of snow

Today’s the kind of day when that song is running through my head.

Snow…
Snow…
Snow…
Snow.

Snow drifts were like little mountains to us as children. The plows would go by and leave these mountain chains all along the sidewalks and we’d scale them like Mount Everest. We lived near a park with hills that were prime for sledding during the winter and we went there often. In fact, the sledding hills were named – we called them “King’s Hill” and “Queen’s Hill.” I don’t know who named them, but we all knew them that way.

We used regular sleds and toboggans, but when I was in junior high, the sled people put their heads together and said, “Why don’t we make a sled out of plastic? It will be a long sheet of plastic with a hole at the front for grabbing. Let’s call it a mini-boggan.” And the mini-boggan was born. These modern sleds curled up when you picked them up, but they were a lot easier to carry up a hill and they came in lots of bright colors. All the parents lined up to buy them and soon the sledding hills were full of these colorful plastic sheets with children on them.

One day my dad came down to watch us do some sledding and to take some movies of us with his super-8 camera. There were five us us kids in the family by then and he had us all pile up on the toboggan first for a nice shot of everyone going down. Have you ever been the last person on the toboggan? At the first bump, you end up on the hill watching everyone else go down. It’s true – ask anyone.

Then he went to the bottom of the hill to watch us from there. I came down a particularly bumpy part of the hill on my mini-boggan and when I hit a large divot at the bottom, I flew head over heels in a spectacular way. Dad was thrilled, but he hadn’t had the camera on, so he asked me to do it again. “I’ll film it in slow-motion – it’ll be great!” I wasn’t quite as thrilled about this proposition. My knees had taken quite a beating on the way down and the crash landing at the end hadn’t been nearly as fun for me as it was for him. But the show must go on! I went back up valiantly to do the whole thing over again. At least that was my intention. But when I saw that huge divot looming up before me, my knees made a unilateral decision and we veered to the left of it. Poor Dad…he tried to reassure me that it was okay, but I could see the disappointment of that missed shot on his face. He didn’t ask me again.

This has been Tuesday True Stories with Lynniebeemuseoday.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning – watch for me on the sledding hill where I’ll throw the blog post in the air on the way down. Whee!