Homemade Toboggan

            Snowfalls one winter were light and fluffy and not at all conducive to any type of winter sports or play. We couldn’t afford skis. The snow wasn’t wet enough to pack into snowballs, make forts, build snowmen, or tamp down to pack trails for our sled runners. The snow was good only for toboggans that could ride on the top of the snow.

            Les Hall was a neighbor kid. He was older and had access to more tools and supplies than we did. He decided to build a toboggan of his own. It started with a plank that was nearly sixteen inches wide, eight feet long, and an inch and a half thick. That would be the seat and body of the toboggan.

            From another unused board, he shaped four “runners” twenty-four inches long with one end cut into half an arc.  Using several wide chrome strips from junk cars, he shaped them to follow the curve of each runner, attaching them to the curved runners. Two runners were connected by a wooden frame making a pair of runners for the front end and a pair for the back. One set was attached directly to the rear board seat and the other was placed in the front to allow for steering.

            Les drilled a large hole in the front end of the toboggan board, inserting a shaft through the hole in the platform and through the hole in the front runner’s platform. Between the platform and the seat were two large, greased washers that would allow the wheel affixed to the shaft to turn the mobile runners for steering.

            The result was a large, weighty, cumbersome lumbering monster, but it was finished and we were anxious to try it out. It wasn’t beautiful, but would it work? It looked like a creation from the Little Rascals’ comedy clips.

Dragging the behemoth behind us on a rope, we got it to the top of the hill. Les hunched over the wheel, his feet resting on the front runners for extra steering control. The rest of us kids pushed the toboggan and jumped on as it began to move. We made it to the bottom of the hill, but there wasn’t much speed. It was too heavy and the width of the runners wasn’t large to allow it to glide along freely.

            Riding the toboggan was better than doing nothing at all, but it was so heavy that we called it quits after struggling to get the toboggan to the top of the hill several times. We stored it and then we went home. I don’t believe we ever used it again and have no idea what happened to it.