SNOW KIDDING

Well, it snowed again last night. Not enough to have any fun with, though. We had one real doozy last year, so Big Bore and I went outside and made a Christmas tree out of snow and played snow baseball. The tree lasted one day--neighborhood thugs did a drive-by that night and busted up all the snow creations on our street. I retaliated by making a smaller version in the safety of our fenced-in backyard, and it lasted until the spring thaw.

We had enough snow and ice a month ago for some quality sledding, but we never saw any kids taking advantage of it. Mama Bore in Fredonia observed the same thing.

"Where are all the kids with their sleds?" she asked. "I used to see bunches of them traipsing by when it snowed."

"Ah, they're all at home text messaging their friends or downloading dirty pictures on their computers," I told her. "They're a lot more sophisticated than we were when we were kids."

For the past 50+ years, she has lived near the base of the South Mound in Fredonia. Now, the streets leading up to the South Mound were once Sledding Central in the winter time. There were, and maybe still are, three different paths to go down: the one-block long, steeper Carney Street, the two-block long curve around 7th onto Robinson, or the two-block curve around 7th on down to Washington, which was the highway through town. The city crew workers would put chat down at the Washington base to prevent nasty run-ins with the big rigs. Every once in a while, we would sled on past the barricades there and say a little prayer that traffic would be light. I can't recall any lawsuits.

Probably everyone who ever grew up in Fredonia has his or her own sledding accident story, and my big one was a fabulous tandem curb jumper with my pal Rat. All day long, it seemed, we had been taking the 7th Street route down to the highway, but adding our own little twist. Once we rounded the first block, we would jump the curb at Robinson and then sled through all the yards, including his own, on to Washington. Rat was the steering man on the bottom, and I was the giggling weight on the top.

I'm not exactly sure what went wrong on what turned out to be our last leap of the day. We either got too much air, or not enough, or Rat just oversteered, but we ending up slamming, and I do mean slamming, into a guide wire. Instant WHAM!!!! Then we went rolling off the sled. I don't remember crying--pros like us tried not to cry--but we both went home to our moms to nurse our wounds. The next day at school I showed off the best black eye in my life, while the Rat was absent. In fact, I think he was home for several days recuperating from the jolt. Fifty-plus years later, we still laugh about it. At the risk of sounding like my cranky Grandma Bore, "Kids these days don't know what they're missing out on!"