2024, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Sled!

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At the back of my grandson’s elementary school is a good sized hill that the children can play on. I suppose in the fall and spring they roll down it. Now that they have enough snow, our son went to Lowe’s and bought a sled, and they had a great time on Saturday sledding down the school hill.

The sled is blue and green and made of PET plastic. It is long and narrow. Son had a similar sled when he was growing up. We called it the Black Blaster. Husband loved taking the kids to the butte two blocks from our house that had perfect slopes for sledding. It was a great way to wear out active kids.

I had a wooden sled with metal runners that you were supposed to be able to steer, but I was never very successful at it. Luverne didn’t have may hills at all, and the opportunities for sledding were pretty limited. The best places for sledding were the piles of snow at the elementary school that were from clearing the play ground. When I was in Grade 6 that wasn’t even an option as the school administration banned all snow pile play after someone broke their arm in a vigorous game of King of Mountain.

I am really glad our grandson has a good place to sled. Son said there were lots of happy yells as he descended the hill. I will have to find out if the sled has a name.

What are your sledding and winter play memories? Ever ride on a toboggan?

36 thoughts on “Sled!”

  1. i had many great sledding days

    my most memorable ended up in the doctors office the sled in the picture from its early production had a runner that instead of curling back up to joint the frame stuck straight out like a stick. i ran into the girls i was chasing down the hill and the runner from their sled went into the hood of my coat . the girl on the sled screamed “you’re gonna need stitches” so i walked home with my mitten turning red on the walk. it was cold enough out i never felt the pain. i was lucky it didn’t enter at a different angle

    tabaggin down the river path ended up with the three guys behind me crashing forward as and the taboggin dug through the crust on top of the 12 inch snowfall and as we plowed to a stop the buddies behind me pushed me into the snow face first and the ice crust cut through my nose like a knife

    58 stitches first accident

    12 on the taboggin

    but two out of the hundred of sledding adventures i had … heck that’s nothin

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  2. We had a sled like the picture, that Dad had painted bright yellow and red. Mostly remember him pulling us in the street – Storm Lake didn’t have many hills. Once we got to Marshalltown, though, there was a great hill out at the country club, and I got to see what toboggans were all about.

    We did a lot of skating though, and I got pretty good – could do a little jump and land backwards without falling down. My grandma had a little rink across the street, and I remember skating with my grandpa, uncle, cousins… whenever we were visiting.

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    1. Wessew, you were absent over the weekend, and I was awaiting your response to the big news about #45 on Friday after your years of yearning for consequences and justice. Did you spend the weekend torturing MAGAs on social media sites?

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  4. Rise and Take a Joy Ride, Baboons,

    When I was very young I had sled like the one in the picture. I remember riding around behind my dad pulling me or going down a very small hill in the back yard. When I was older I ice skated a lot, which I so enjoyed. A friend taught me to skate backwards and spin which caused me to feel very elegant and Peggy Fleming-ish. 

    From 1977-79 I lived on a camp in Northern MN north of Grand Rapids. We had a long toboggan hill that opened onto the lake. That was so much fun going down and a real trudge going back up. We had many winter visitors to that camp, so the toboggan hill was a big feature. The City of Eden Prairie has a similar hill that opens onto Staring Lake where we used to take the kids. That really wore them out. That hill is probably responsible for some of the arthritis in my lower back today! Hitting a rough bump and landing hard was a standard part of the down hill ride.

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  5. Moorhead had a toboggan run somewhat like the style seen in sporting events only a little narrower. It was more like a bobsled run. The toboggans available were 4, 2 and single seaters. The wooden structure was about 20 feet tall. There was no running start. Very dangerous to hands outside the toboggan dimensions. I guess safety wasn’t a big enough issue in the 50s and 60s.

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  6. Growing up, I had a terrific sledding hill about 4 blocks from home. Very wide so lots of room. Steep but not mountain-scary. A decent runout so there was no risk of crashing into a wal, trees, a body of water, etc.

    My sled was similar to the photo sled. I pretty much wore that thing out during my sledding years. Got away from it in junior high. Then in high school, a friend had a tobaggon that we took to Theodore Wirth Park on Saturday nights in winter. Usually did the main sliding hill, which was terrific. But the real adventure came if you went past the top of that run to another hill on the golf course. That was usually deserted or almost deserted. A shorter but steeper slide and the run out ended one way or another at Basset Creek. One night we lost control, all bailed out just in time, and watched the tobaggon careen into the iced over creek, then crash into a tree. It splintered badly enough that we couldn’t use it.

    But those were great memories because my four friends were all girls ( I sort of had a harem, although we were so innocent and wholesome no one would’ve believed us that we were all just good friends.) Best of all, one of those harem members was my future wife. We shared more than a few cups of hot chocolate on that hill between rides, then satisfied our hunger by going to Embers at midnight and scarfing down burgers and malts.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  7. We had one of those sleds like in the picture too. Were they called “Royal Racers”? Something like that. They really don’t steer well. You’re supposed to be able to sit on them and steer with your feet. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work when the runners don’t turn at all.

    Later, we got mini-boggans. They were like a flat blue sheet of plastic with a yellow rope handle on the front. I don’t remember who it was, but someone got a big laceration from the edge of one of those things and we weren’t allowed to use ours anymore. I remember something coming out about their safety, and I think they stopped manufacturing them. We also had a metal saucer, like a shallow round dish that a kid could sit on and just fly, spinning, down the hill. That thing was a blast.

    We skated a lot. We had Cannon Lake right in front of us. One winter it was super cold but there wasn’t much snow. There was lots of bare ice with patches of snow in between. I remember skating all over the lake. That was so much fun and I remember it so clearly.

    I was 8 when I got my first pair of x-c skis. We didn’t sled much after getting skis and having the lake to skate on. We also had a cedar dogsled made in Two Harbors. Dad would hitch it to the snowmobile and drive. Mom would stand in the back and the three of us would sit on the sled. Our dog, Gus, would run along with us. We’d go out on the frozen lake and just sled all over. My dad wasn’t often fun but that was the kind of thing he did that was special.

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  9. When I was growing up in St. Louis there weren’t a lot of sledding opportunities. Maybe two or three times a year there might be enough snow on the ground and it would last long enough that you could go sledding. The best place to go sledding was at the hill at the Art Museum in Forest Park. And there was a creek down at the bottom that froze over occasionally and people could skate on it. I had an old-fashioned sled like in the picture and I don’t ever remember any childhood injuries.

    However, as a young young adult, I went sledding late at night at Farmstead Lnndale Park, which has a great hill and used to have fewer trees. We didn’t have sleds at that point, so we used pieces of cardboard. We went down about a dozen times, but at the last time we went over a mogul, and when we came down some joint of his (knee or elbow or even head) came into contact with my face. It’s the only time in my life I’ve had a shiner and it was a doozie…had people for days asking me if I was safe.

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  10. Despite fracturing my right femur in two places on my very first sledding excursion, my childhood was rich in sledding, x-country and downhill skiing (using the same skis), and ice skating.

    The top of our sledding hill, locally referred to as kælkebakken, which simply means the sledding hill, was accessible by crossing the street from our house. There were plenty of big beech trees on it, but that never dimmed our enthusiasm.

    Skibakken, the downhill ski hill, was directly opposite kælkebakken. It was steeper and didn’t have any trees on it. Both hills terminated in the same area, with skiers and sledders coming from opposite directions. Near the top of the ski hill, a handfull of patients, all Greenlanders from our local tuberculosis sanatorium who were no longer contagious, built a ski jump out of snow, and taught us how to use it. I remember what a thrill that was once I garnered enough courage to try it. I have no doubt that a lot of my current lower back issues stem from injuries sustained on that hill.

    Between the two hills was a pond, dubbed Hjertesøen because it was shaped like a heart, and most winters that’s where we skated. It was small and pretty shallow, not to mention pretty crowded. Occasionally, it would get cold enough that we could skate on the sound, the body of water between Falster, the island I lived on, and the neighboring island of Bogø. I recall one winter where we had a prolonged period of frigid temperatures and the whole sound froze, and you could drive cars from one island to the other, if you had a car, that is. We didn’t. Dad remembered it happening once when he was a child, too, so that was not a common occurrence.

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  12. I bought a 2 seat toboggan at a yard sale many years ago. It was made of wood, and in really good shape. Next door’s youngest daughter asked to borrow it so she could take her two boys tobogganing. She never returned it, and claimed her ex had either sold it or destroyed it. I never had the opportunity to try it, though I have no idea where I would have used it.

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  13. I loved cross country skiing along and on the Red River when I lived in Moorhead and in Winnipeg for college and grad school. . There was very little wind down on the river. It is far too windy out here to ski. Luverne is windy, too, although Blue Mounds State Park might have some trails that are more protected.

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  14. I don’t remember having sleds, though sometime in the 70’s some flat plastic saucers became popular. I don’t think I ever had one, but borrowed from friends a few times. Most of the snowy activities I recall had more to do with making feeble attempts at snow forts, and the occasional snowman or woman. And snow angels.

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  15. Thirty years ago, or so, when we first met Will Steger, husband and I visited his homestead north of Ely during the winter on numerous occasions. At the time he had a lot of sled dogs that he used to pull sleds on his various expeditions. During the winter the dogs were used to pull sleds loaded with logs across Picket Lake to build cabins on the opposite shore. It was great fun to be able to experience first hand the skill of both the mushers and the dogs as they navigated the challenging terrain surrounding the lake. We actually met Will through one of his mushers, a Dane who had served his military service in Greenland on the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit.

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