Tough Sledding

My first sled I can remember owning was a Flexible Flyer. Its varnished wooden platform slats seemed to come alive as the sled was unwrapped. Bright red steel runners begged to be taken out for an adventure in the snow. The small slope beside my parent’s house was the beginnings of my youthful winter downhill excursions with my sled.

As I grew older and the paint began to wear from the sled’s runners, the adventures with my sled extended to tides with my friends and that became more challenging. The course was Coal Bank Hill Road. The pathway was rather steep and we could have ended up on Route 711… if we were unable to roll off the sled to stop the downward plunge. Sometimes cinders the township spread on the road stopped the sleds before we were ready. I lost more than a few buttons that snagged on my sled when it stopped and I didn’t.

A homemade, “Little Rascals” contraption we constructed was the neighbor kid’s toboggan. The body was made of a 2 x 12 plank, 8 feet long. It had chrome clad runners and a steering wheel taken from a car to guide it. Hauling it back to the top of the hill after each run was a chore. It was abandoned when we discovered it was so heavy.

We joined some other friends when my parents visited a friend’s nearby farm. Their toboggan was just the opposite, it was light and fast. Also kid created from a corrugated aluminum sheet with one end curled back, this aluminum toboggan glided on the snow with ease and speed.

My cousins were forced to discard their makeshift “sled” when they found they were unable to steer it. The hood of a car was fast, but it was also dangerous. It crashed into a tree and one of my cousins fractured her pelvis.

Other cousins used their wide coal shovel removed from their basement for as a sled. Taking turns, they would rest their feet on the wide metal blade. By pulling back on the handle they’d glide in the snow. These were the same cousins who ran around barefoot in the snow after losing their shoes when the snowplow came by their house.

Over the years, my kids used several types of sleds. Plastic toboggans and inner tubes mostly, but my youngest rode in a plastic produce drawer from a refrigerator while visiting my parent’s house, sliding on the same hill where I had my first sled riding adventure.