Reminiscing and thoughts

Roger Pozzi

Member
Messages
75
Location
Mount Vernon, Ohio
We spent Saturday travelling to visit MIL in nursing facility then to BIL's just because, then to my sister's before heading home.
170 miles all told and a good day for driving.
Our trip involved going through some Amish country on the first and last leg of our trip, albeit there were 2 different areas. We were admiring the beauty of the snow covered hills and fields and suddenly my wife and I both noticed the lack of sledding tracks. A lot of what we were seeing was not in the amish communities and we started remembering the fun we had as children with just a small rise (possibly just a ditch bank) and the number of friends that came from all around to join in. Now we wondered just why there were no kids having fun (as we had) since the temps were in the mid 20's and the sun was shining brightly. It was perfect conditions!
Has society changed so drastically that the children of today have no fun? Is "electronic" gaming that over-whelming that the natural enjoyment of being outdoors in ideal surroundings with friends has disappeared?
Just a little of my thoughts for today.
 
No, probably not that overwhelming, their mother hasn't kicked them out to make them go play most likely...of course mom and dad need to get out there and play too. I woke to see a video posted by BIL/SIL and their 3 boys, they were out in it all day yesterday. They don't have many hills where they are, so he was pulling the boys around in laundry baskets behind the truck (slowly), looked like they were having a blast.
 
Ahh, I've missed my chance to go sledding. Let's see, I've got snow right now. What can I rig up as a sled, and not kill myself crashing through the fences.
 
the kids are still sledding.
as a matter of fact, I saw them today in the public park, where there is one small hill. The park gates are closed, but the kids squeeze through the locked gate and get their sleds through, along with a lot of the parents.

and not that long ago, we saw pics of the kids at a SUNY(new York state university), sledding down slopes next to their dorms with the same lunch room trays that my son and his dorm mates used back 10 years ago.

the only real difference I see is that most of the sleds today are sheets of plastic, or round plates of plastic, no more metal runners with wooden slats.
I saw one kid today on a bicycle looking sled, with a seat, handlebars, and instead of wheels, skis, but I didn't see him go down, just saw him sitting on it near bottom.
 
Last edited:
Roger, the wife and I spent last weekend in Sugarcreek and I was thinking about some of those hills along 39 and 62 for sledding. They would be a blast to come down but I'm thinking that climb back to the top..... Not so much.

Yeah, and just think of sledding down that long wide driveway at Keim Lumber! :rofl:
 
Electronic sledding???

When I was a kid I was almost never in the house.

I didn't even watch Saturday Morning cartoons. Well maybe Bull Winkle, Captain Kangaroo but that's about it.

When I was younger, under 12, we lived at the end of the road next to the woods... we didn't have electricity, no TV (I was in 5th grade first time I ever saw one... 14 when we got our first - we had moved into town by then) so no cartoons and in summer no AC so it was cooler to be outside... the neighbor boys would come to my house and we would disappear into the woods for the day... only rule was, be home by supper. Sometimes the neighbor boys would bring their horses and we took off on them, but more often, just headed out barefoot and played 'til dark.

We decided to dig a cave one day and started digging in the dirt... we had a shaft about 5 foot square, down about 6 feet and were looking for shoring (at least we knew enough to shore it up as it was mostly sand) then the parents found out and put a stop to that.... so we started cutting saplings to build a "fort"... actually more like a log cabin... we got the walls up about 5 feet and our dads needed some fence posts and here their boys had already cut them a supply, so our "fort/cabin" became a fence.

We didn't have a well at our place either, so we got water from the neighbor's... about 1/4 mile up the road... I always took two buckets, one to bring water back in, and one to splash along the way so I could walk in the hot sand. We generally went barefoot from about May til October, except to school... but the shoes came off as soon as I got home and changed from school clothes to play clothes... I still go barefoot in the house most of the time.

Never sledded though... Texas rarely got snow back in my youth.
Tried skiing once back after my divorce... took the kids up to Badger Pass in Calif... the daughter loved it, the boy would have none of it... he was only 5 at the time so I took him to play somewhere else while the daughter skied...
 
Last edited:
As a kid I couldn't wait to get out in the snow, and in Syracuse there was plenty of it! Had two great sledding hills that all the neighborhood kids used and we were there from dawn to dusk or until frostbite, whichever came first. My kids loved to sled and so do their kids. In this area most of the hills are man made and belong to the local government. Thanks to litigation, these hills are no longer available to the public.....it's a darn shame!
 
I grew up in Aurora Colorado, my home was on the east and south side of the old Stapleton Airport. At the east of of the runways, Aurora had a "sledding park". Nice big hills, with several long runs and a few steep runs along Sand Creek and nearby Bluff Lake. That was in the 60s. I lived pretty close, so I could drag my sled behind me across vacant fields to get to the sledding park. That sled never got loaded into a car to go sledding. :)

Today that area, which was pretty run down, has been turned into a fantastic nature area for birding (Bluff Lake Nature Area). We live in the northern part of the state, and are birders now, but it sure brings back some great memories to visit that area and recall all the hours of fun I had sledding with friends. I remember my dad taking me to a store in Denver to buy my Flexible Flyer when I was about 8. I still have it -- over 50 years later. It is still in fantastic condition. About the only childhood possession I still have.

I'll quit now, tears of joy welling up in my eyes are making it difficult to type .... :p
 
Top