King of the Slopes…
One of the worst snowstorms ever to hit the South was in early 1951. I was a wee lad living with my family in Meridian, MS, where it never snowed. Nobody had winter gear. Sleds were unheard of. No one had ever seen a pair of skis except in the movies (TV was not yet available to the local populace). But in 1951 it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. The memories of wee lads tend to grow along with wee lads, so I don’t really know how much snow accumulation there was, but it had to be several feet deep… Well, OK, probably a couple of inches. But to wee lads who had never seen snow, that was a blizzard, the storm of the century.
A family had recently moved in next door. They came from Maryland, wherever that was, and their son Dickie had a sled! He was a few years older and quite possessive of his sled, not wanting it wrecked or damaged by an incompetent wee lad who had never seen one. Mama felt sorry for my younger brother and me, not being able to sled down the steep driveway. We might never see another snow and she didn’t want us to miss the experience. So out she comes with a very large, old enameled steel dishpan for me and a big cookie sheet for little brother, David.
That day I did some serious sledding panning down that driveway, off the end of it and on down the hill in the back yard. As for little bro’ who was only about four years old, he mostly just sat on the cookie sheet at the bottom of the driveway, watched me zoom down and trudge back up, and yelled and waved his arms a lot. The zooming and trudging lasted until afternoon when the snow began melting, the dishpan started kicking up sparks from contact with the concrete driveway, and a hole was worn through the enamel and steel. But for those few hours on that one day, yes sir, I was King of the Slopes!
7 Comments so far
Neat story. I grew up where we regularly had snow during the winter (mouth of the Columbia River Gorge and on a slope of the Cascade Mountains) and living on a hill ourselves, right behind the house was this huge slope– well actually not so steep when I look at it as an adult but to a child– very impressive. If we used the gravel road, the cars would have beaten off a trail for a sled but that was more dangerous as cars did occasionally use it during the day; so we often walked to the back and created our own sled trail. That took more work than the actual sledding time. I would get cold and bored. I’d tell my little brother I was going in for a bathroom stop only ‘forget’ to return. Little brothers eventually do figure it out…
hehehe…wonder what your little brother’s version of that day might be?
Interesting… I also remember the storm of 1951. We were living in Cleveland, Ohio and the snow was 4 feet deep. Far to deep for sledding even though I had a sled. No one could move for days. My dad ad I trudged a few miles to a grocery store to get milk and bread. Only one quart to a customer so my dad sent me in separately so we could get two quarts.
I also have a younger brother named David. He spent that year in a hospital with polio. So he didn’t get to “enjoy’ the big snow.
Ain’t it interesting how life happens?
Trays we used to use. We never have much snow as we’re near the sea so the slightest snowfall was reason to get the trays out.
Thanks for jogging that memory. We enjoyed that rare once-in-a-childhood snow in 1951 in San Antonio…but, alas, no hills or slopes on our street, so we contented ourselves with snowball fights and taking lots of black and white photos with the Kodak Brownie. We covered our shoes with bread sacks and rubber bands to keep our feet dry.
i think snow stories are better told by people who don’t see snow that often…
…. heh…. I once melted the ass out of a pair of gortex trousers doing something very similar in Alaska… slid at LEAST half a mile down the side of a mountain….