Back in my day

My childhood neighborhood crew used to spend every minute of each snow day on the hill. My brother and I would pull on gear, mostly hand-me-downs from our New England cousins, and dig through our garage to find anything that resembled a sled. We had these metal disks that resembled the bright, plastic that kids use today--were they meant to be sleds or were they scrap metal from the air force base where my uncle worked? Inner tubes, handy during the summer on the lake, did the trick as long as we could avoid getting scraped by the poky nozzle. My brother commandeered one half of a snail topper that rode above our car on long trips. Bunches of us fit inside although I can't say we picked up any speed. My mom found us a good old-fashioned toboggan. Bo--rrr--ing, although rubbing candle wax along the blades was novelty enough, even if it made no difference in the ride.

The Wilsons lived right across the street from the sledding hill, and once or twice we made it into their second floor kitchen for hot chocolate. While it was fun to see Coco's bedroom and play with her Barbies (a coveted toy I wasn't allowed to have), I remember getting antsy in my still-wet clothes. Mostly we'd slug back to our house with drenched snow pants and frozen feet. My mom would build a fire in the wood stove that gave off enough heat for three houses, making our family room into a coma-inducing inferno. Hershey's was the base for our hot chocolate and on lucky occasions, the marshmallows were stale and chewy, better for snacking. Maybe we'd watch TV or maybe we'd ask Scott Wilson to draw something so we could ogle at how effortlessly precise details fell on the page. Eventually, we'd get stir crazy and someone would suggest that we head out again, so we'd reassemble boots, mittens, hats that were hot and hanging on the metal rods attached just for that purpose. Off we'd go, a parade of four to six to glide, tumble, and climb, to feel cold air in our faces and play until the tips of our fingers screamed and the wood stove called our names again.