Snow

I wonder how many facebook posts this weekend mention snow.   Well how can you talk or write about anything else with a huge storm blanketing the east coast?

It does seem the world divides somewhat on this issue.   As a kid, I could remember my parents responding to snow as a danger, a threat (to livelihood) and nuisance, etc.   Kids unanimously saw it as:
sledding
snow ball fighting  (when we in serious "hate the next block kids" mode we used ice balls)
igloo building
no school
wondrous
just messin around

I keep wondering (at 65) when I'll cross over to the adult side as represented by my parents.   It hasn't happened yet.  I even like (I hate to admit this) the slippery challenge of driving with snow.   Now I mostly just like to mess around in the whiteness.

In Newark we had two locations for snow play.   Eckert Avenue went right by my house.   I remember it has a huge hill.   Now that I have gone back, I see it's really a small incline.   We had a lot of sled traffic on Eckert between Huntington Terrace and Schuyler Ave.   If we were brave we would stop traffic on Huntington and keep going downwards to Osborne Ave.   Sometimes we'd just station a lookout there to watch for cars.   The big snow deal for me was if we got in a car and my father took my to Weequahic Park to a real sledding hill.   If half the memory is the terror and glory of going down, isn't half the misery and hard work of trekking back up a long hill to go again.   The only drawback to Weequahic Hill is that if you didn't stop yourself at the bottom, you ended up in a stream.   (Now of course in WVa it's a creek.)   Once I went to the stream, broke through the ice and got soaked.   Somehow as sometimes happens in childhood, my father blamed me for carelessness, and that was really not fun. 

When we moved to Springfield, we snuck into Baltusrol Golf Club right behind our house.   There was a long thin hill up into the trees above the golf course. These hills were the very first Watchung "Mountains" off the New Jersey coastal plane.  It was a really great hill.   We usually built a small jump towards the bottom for extra thrills.   I once went up there with my High School girlfriend Trudy.   Going over that jump double decker (pretty racy, huh) she hurt her leg.   Now she'd have to make up some story for her parents since they had banned her seeing me.

We were trespassing to sled at Baltusrol.   We had to climb a very tall chain link fence and run like crazy across the snow covered course.   They had a watchman who was noted for chasing kids.   One time he did catch a bunch of his.   He was pretty scary with threats of arrest, etc.   In the end it was much ado about nothing.   Also at Baltusrol we had a pretty good skating pond that froze over.   I remember learning to do the whip there.   Being on the outside with all that whip and momentum was pretty cool.   We also played skate tag.   One time I was chasing Ed Schnell.   I hated Ed because he was one of my nemesis kids who always teased me:   "Big Nose" Jimmy Durante" "Snoz"   he called me.   Well my chase was motivated by these bitter feelings.   I couldn't seem to catch up with him, so motivated by all that anger, and without thinking, I just dived at him (like a football tackle) to tag him.   I got him.   His skate coming up also opened up a pretty big bloody flap of skin above my right eye.   The whole thing was a huge surprise to me (and probably to him, who must have thought I was crazy.)  I had to run home to stop the bleeding.   I didn't get stitches, but probably should have.   About a half inch lower and.....one less Becker eye.

Thank god the kids came along in Morgantown   Just as  taking them to the basketball game gave me an excuse to eat cotton candy the kids gave me the excuse and frequent winter reason to keep sledding.  Now I had a toboggan for extra fun.   We used to carom off the Richard Cohen's Hill with Nina and Adam in the rickety cracking toboggan.  The hill had a two foot or so jump when it left their lawn and went into the street.   We usually made it, though the landing was a bit hard on our bottoms.

We've done the big tobagan hill at Chestnut Ridge  (boy what a walk up), and little hills in 1st ward park and MHS  and on Jackson Street.   Before the kids would go on their own, we would either sled double decker (one on top of the other) or seated in tandem.   Double decker is cozy and a challenge for the top person to hang on.  Sometimes the extra weight drives the bottom person's face into the snow.   Tandem is a difficult to steer and in some conditions the extra weight makes the sled or toboggan not go where it's pointed.   The folks in back (usually the kids) feel pretty safe.   The father in front has all the responsibility plus a great view of what they might run into.

Once I did go out on my own (in Morgantown, no kids) with my flexible flyer to the Law Center Hill.   That was scary as hell.   The speed was tremendous and the terrain was bouncy.   Ultimately I was bounced off, bent my glasses, and got pretty bruised up.  Mostly I was cowed, because I'd never really been scared on a sled before.  (Yes, by the way, I still have my old flexible flyer.   Does anybody these days know to smooth up the skis on a metal runner sled?)

Still I'm not done.   I'm not looking for the next mountain to climb, but surely for the next to sled down.  Hurray!