What’s up with these dippy meteorologists? First they come up with all these crazy names for full moons, then they try Tom terrify us with bomb cyclones, and now they’ve unilaterally decided to ignore seasons based on centuries old understanding of the Earth’s orbit around the sun and its transit across the ecliptic and try to tell us that Winter ends on February 29? So what season does it give way to, and how long does that last, I’d like to know?
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Rosebud.
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We came home when our feet were numb. That was the only thing that did it.
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Our sledding "hill" was down a two block-long sidewalk that was so steep that there were many sets of 2-4 steps in order to make it walkable. The snow was usually high-moisture and froze to ice almost immediately.
Grab the Flexible Flyer, wax the runners, trudge up to the top and let 'er rip. Launching over those steps at high speeds made for spectacular crashes, lots of bruises and broken sleds. The occasional homeowner who actually shoveled their sidewalk, Yooogely raised the level of difficulty.
No wonder my back hurts…
We grew up sledding and tobogganing during every sufficient snowfall 50 years ago. Now one wonders if many kids who want to partake in winter fun are prevented from doing so by neurotic helicopter parents and their hyper emphasis on keeping their precious budding geniuses in a bubble...
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I still have my 1960s-era Flexible Flyer, carted through more than two dozen moves through six countries. Every December, it becomes part of the Christmas decorations in our Swiss home. I often wonder why my typical American sled is so different from the Davos-style wooden sledges (sleds) seen here. Sledding is a great activity for kids of all ages. Hope climate change doesn't take this simple pleasure away from future generations.
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When you're a child, you want to test your limits, and at the bottom of the sledding hill at Milwaukee's Currie Park, there was a creek that I tried to sled into. But I never actually fell in, no matter how many times I used my arms to try to pick up speed.
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Plenty of sledding hills here in Colorado. Denver maintains its own hill (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Hill_Terrain_Park) in an effort to encourage outdoor activities. Nevertheless, ski hills are dangerous just like actual ski/snowboard slopes. Wear a helmet!
One of my favorite memories is careening down the very steep Chapel hill at my College on a plastic tray “borrowed” from my dining hall at midnight after studying most snowy, winter evenings! The fun was to crash into the hay bales at the bottom of the hill instead of the lurking stone wall!! Even now, 30 years later, I’m smiling!!😎
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Give me a flexible flyer every time!
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Ah, such memories. Classic runner sleds, metal discs, even simple pieces of plastic sheeting or cardboard. The vehicle didn't matter - just getting that thrill of whooshing down the slope to some potentially "crashy" ending.
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AnythIng from Flexible Fliers to refrigerator boxes zooming down Pelton Park’s Tobaggan in South Yonkers couldn’t be beat back in the day. Alas, one of the area’s best “sleigh riding,” as we call it, spots has been shut down for years do to safely concerns.
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I grew up sledding (the aluminum flying saucer was my favorite) and took my kids to local parks to do the same. Nothing tasted quite as good as hot cocoa afterwards. I stopped sledding for the most part, however, when my sled hit an unseen bump, launched me into the air and I slammed onto my tailbone. Xrays showed a fractured cervical vertebra and 35 years later, my neck is still stiff. Darn those bump-builders!
Brings back fond memories of childhood innocence, sledding down the giant hill at the Field Club near 36th street and Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska. If you did it right, you could travel for a quarter of a mile down into a ravine and almost all the way to the railroad tracks. No parents there to tell you to hold onto your mittens or to pull your sled uphill for you, but maybe to meet you back home with a cup of Swiss Miss.
I think the country club now prohibits it.
*Sigh*
When was the last time you laughed so hard you lost all your strength? Thats what is bound to happen when your sled tilts and you and your compadres are ejected at a high rate of speed, rolling until gravity takes hold. Honestly, I'm 52 and seeing these pics made me laugh out loud remembering those hilarious passenger explosions that left your hat askew, snow in your ears, glasses fogged and unharmed bodies stacked or strewn across half the length of hill. Pure winter delight! I'd give $100 to anything that could make me laugh like that again!
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Great memories of sled riding at the Severance Street tow hill in Benzonia, Michigan! Too bad we don't have any snow or hills here in my neck of the woods now. I still have my jumpers and memories of so much fun!
Wait, not everyone goes sledding?
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When our 3 boys were growing up in South Burlington VT, they would stay out all day with the neighborhood kids on a snowy cold day on our short but steep sledding hill in the back of our house. I remember supplying them with buckets and buckets of hot water from the house so they could ice it up and make it even faster. Good times! The hot chocolate afterwards was well earned.
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Went sledding with my granddaughter a few weeks ago after years of abstinence. So much fun until I took a serious dive,
hit my head and suffered a concussion that is still with me.
Years of doing the same and no trouble and now this. I'll
go back to sledding because of all the fun but with a helmet
on my head. And that will be doctor's orders.
There is are several great sledding hills across the street from my house. Its been good fun taking the kids. Also several times a year there is even enough snow to ski from the top of the park back to my house. From top to bottom it is about 600 feet of elevation change. In the early morning after a good snow storm before the neighborhood has given the snow the business, I just drive the Jeep to the top via neighborhood streets with all my gear. Ski back to my house, and then hike back up the hill to get the car. Given that almost the whole park is grass, you only need about 10-15 inches to get good enough coverage you don't scratch up your skies. Both my sons got their ski legs at that park too before I ever took them to resorts.
Thank you for this article!
Beautifully written.
Our family were expats in Germany so we had both the American Flexible Flyer and the wooden German sleds, also a piece of corrugated sheet metal that my father hammered into a sort of toboggan. As an adult when it snows hard overnight you're dreading the drive to work the next morning. As a kid it's nothing but unalloyed joy. I feel sorry for people who didn't live with snow as children.
I grew up in Brooklyn - we would sleigh ride between the tombstones in Cypress Hills Cemetery -
watched the filming of DeathWish with Charles Bronson one cold winter day ... way back when....
good times....
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It was a past time in the midwest & east coast as well -- until global warming took over.
A few years ago you could sled in Central Park too. Now you can’t.
Everytime it snows I think it's beautiful, especially at dawn or dusk. I'll always live here around Chicago, I love the seasons.
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Started sledding as a kid down the hay meadow hill in eastern Kansas. As an adult and parent, I made my kids go out every day after school to the park across the street and go down the sledding hill 10 times, and I joined them. Always fun.
At 50-something, I still sled with my grandson in Berrien Springs, Mi where the hill is steep and long. I sit cross-legged on a saucer and let the wind fly past me. It's almost a spiritual feeling. Sledding.
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I grew up in Connecticut where the top sledding hills were at the golf courses. Without modern day warm Sorrel boots or gortex jackets, our mothers loaded us up with 3 socks covered in plastic bags and rubber boots; an extra pair of mittens, wool sweaters, hand-me-down jackets.....and dropped us off at the top of the course for the afternoon; flexible flyers in hand. For 4 hours, we had the time of our lives until dusk. Frozen, laughing, whirling in the air over a bump....we created some of the most enduring memories of our childhoods. Thank you for this great visual.
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Gosh, I love stories like this.
I was home (central Wisconsin) for the passing of my mother in December, the second of my parents to pass within 2 months. I was lucky enough to arrive in 0 degree weather, with 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground, and snow throughout the weekend.
I went for numerous walkabouts, The first until 2:30 in the morning just to enjoy the cold and snow.
The last day, before my flight back to the miserable and rainy winter of the PNW, I walked down to the local park/sledding hill, and a young mother and her tween boy were sledding. She offered me her toboggan. It was a short, but blissful ride.
Arriving at the airport back in P-town, it was dark, grey, dismal, and rainy. Not at all welcoming.
Where I now live, I understand the fun winter "sport" was "ice-blocking" on a grassy hillside. That sounds dreadfully boring.
3
My kids learned to sled in Minnesota when they were four and six, and to ice skate on our frozen pond holding onto a wooden kitchen chair. But I learned to sled in south central Pennsylvania down a steep two-tiered street that went from the cemetery down to a hay bale in the middle of a cross street. The police would block off the street and cross street whenever it snowed and residents would move their cars out of harm’s way. I still remember the thrill of hitting the first level and then flying into thin air and hitting the second downhill. Woot!
5
I grew up in Milwaukee. Not only do I have fond memories of all day sledding, but also ice skating. The public school playgrounds were flooded and warming sheds set up. Between sledding down steep hills overlooking Lake Michigan and "crack the whip" ice skating, winters were never boring. Oh yeah, give a good blizzard and snow drift, too. Igloos were a great way to enjoy the brilliant sunshine following a good snowstorm. I still miss winter and being young.
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Ah, those were the days! In the late 50's, I once suggested to my little sister to sit on my back, while I went down a well prepared, snow covered street. At the bottom, and while going quite slow, I intentionally went under a parked pick-up truck. Yes, finally Peggy, I admit it. Alas, I still have to chuckle.
3
Go down to your local tire shop and buy a few truck tire inner tubes. When I say ‘truck’, I mean big-rig, 16 wheeler truck inner tubes. Take them home and inflate, walk to the top of the hill, preferably a firm or icy hill. Soft, deep snow works too but you have to create your run first with progressively longer runs down the hill. Build bank turns. Now, give the tube a gentle nudge, a kind of soft kick and run and jump on. Now enjoy amazing speed and elite comfort as you float down the hill! You’ll never go back.
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When people ask me about my favorite winter sport growing up in Vermont i often say “sledding” and they look at me strangely....
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I have to confess getting a bit misty-eyed looking at these pictures, recalling the days spent sledding, then coming home chilled to the bone and exhausted but filled with pure, unalloyed joy. Some things do not change.
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I grew up in Hicksville NY and have fond memories of sledding with my sisters and brothers. These photos made me feel so nostalgic. Bethpage State Park and the slight incline of the field at Holy Trinity HS was a sledding paradise. Thanks for the pictures.
1
Man, New Orleans has Mardi Gras, but no snow. Great read.
Love this story. I grew up in south Minneapolis in the 1960s sledding on the same hills at Lyndale Farmstead Park that are pictured in this article. It brought back many fun memories. One of the best things about it was that we were always sledding unsupervised by adults. There were crashes of course, but rarely anything serious.
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My sledding thrills took place on the hills of Northeastern Pennsylvania in the early 1960s.
A few years ago I finally got a knee fixed caused by sledding on the hood of 1939 Ford (I think) one frigid, moonlit night.
Great times with a bunch of friends sledding on snow covered farm fields and local golf courses, the best places.
Just a few years ago I gave away my Flexible Flyer.
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Sledding is indeed the quintessential childhood experience of many of us midwesterners. it is s simple, joyful exercise and your piece brings back wonderful memories - thank you.
Its simplicity and accessibility is a hallmark of childhood fun. I feel wholeheartedly that it is a positive feature that it, "...still lacks any real frills or pesky safety features." Nothing to inhibit access or get in the way of simple joy.
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I grew up on Long Island, which was pretty flat. A couple of decent slopes in Salisbury (now Eisenhower) Park. But our best spot was the sump (basically a big stormwater retention basin) behind the local strip mall. Because of a break in the fence, all the neighborhood kids went there. Not a long hill, but pretty steep. Spent hours there and loved it.
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@Braniff
My wife grew up in Queens Village and just told me she used to go sledding at Creedmore State Hospital.
Where there was a will, there was a hill to be found.
My trusty wooden sled (a Flexible Flyer knock-off - probably bought at Western Auto or Pep Boys) was one of my most precious childhood possessions.
In addition to sledding on it, I used it to haul newspapers on my paper route when the roads were too snow-packed for my bicycle. (Remember when newspapers were delivered after school by newspaper boys?).
We lived on a hillside on the west bank of the Delaware River (just north of Wilmington). Our favorite sled run was a narrow so street so steep that cars dared not use it when it was snow packed. At the bottom of the hill, this suburban lane T-intersected with a four-lane highway.
So the trick was to learn to jam the steering "hard over" at precisely the last split-second so that the sled would skid sideways for the last thirty feet or so and stop just shy of 50 mph cross traffic. The one who stopped closest to disaster always had bragging rights.
My beloved sled met its end on a nighttime sledding expedition at a local golf course. In the flat moonlight, I never saw the lip of the sand trap dug into the side of a smooth, rolling hill. I was airborne for about thirty feet before the impact knocked the wind out of me - and shattered all four of the wooden cross ribs of the sled.
Good Times!
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In about 1940 I was a ten year old living in the Palouse Hills of eastern Washington. Our fields were covered by a couple of feet of snow and the year I remember it had a frozen crust that I could walk on without breaking through. My Flexible Flyer was like a rocket coming down those steep slopes and of course there were no obstructions.
Looking for even greater speed and more thrills I sledded down a north slope which is typically steeper. Due to prevailing winds they also tended to have drifts. From the top I couldn’t see the drift. I don’t know how far I launched, but when the sled landed the runners broke through crust the sled stopped. I didn’t. I plowed the crusted snow with my face for another several feet, enough to give me a “road rash” on my nose and cheek bones for a week or more.
3
My childhood home was at one of many side-street corners adjoining a steep downhill main street, all paved in brick. I have a scar from the runner of another kid's sled crashing into my ankle, enough to cut through a heavy sock and boot to draw blood. I look at that scar and smile, wondering as well how I survived a childhood in which cars had no seat belts, bicycling required no helmet, and "free-range" children weren't a thing but the norm.
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So did I but just barely, thanks to numerous ER visits!
Fortunate to have grown up in snow country (NW PA and upstate NY). In upstate NY, it was a small town and everyone ate dinner EARLY....so every night after dinner (6:30 at the latest) we were back outside for another hour or so of sledding. Our next door neighbors had a great hill in their backyard and installed a floodlight for us. A wonderful time.
13
Grew up in Manhattan and we went sledding all the time in the winters of the 60's & 70's, neighborhood of Mornigside Heights. It was not a very steep hill, and it was concrete underneath, but we still spent hours having a fun times till it was too dark to see anything.
I also remember even the Hudson river would have chunks of ice as it came down from upstate.
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@Anonymous
Now the kids in Morningside Hts sled in Riverside Park--at the start of winter the Parks Dept puts out bales of hay (minimally effective) in front of trees along the designated sled runs. Not so safe! These Midwestern parks look much roomier. BTW, so far this winter no playable snow on the Upper West Side.
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I am 77yo and grew up in St Paul MN. We lived on a small lake with a hill rolling down towards the water. I remember my dad and uncle building a 3 step up ramp out of packed snow. They then iced the ramp and off we went... Flying down that hill with extra speed! Such fond memories while reading this article... Some things should never change!
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I grew up in Cleveland in a neighborhood that bumped up against a golf course. We used to sneak through a whole in the fence on one of the fairways, where there was a great sledding hill. We also spent plenty of time sledding in the metroparks. Definitely great memories.
6
I grew up in Minnesota and this brings back great memories. I also remember snow piling up so high that we could climb the piles and get to the garage roof and jump off on the sled! Our driveway was steep and the snow on either side piled so high that my sister was almost run over as her sled slid into the street. Thankfully people drove very slowly because they knew no one could see coming out of the driveway.
There was a big community hill in the town in PA where I raised my boys. So glad they got to do this too.
4
Wow, I really miss snow. My now grown kids got to go sledding enough to know what it's like, but they didn't get to experience the dependable snow, or the frozen lakes for ice skating, that I got to as a kid in northern Illinois. I still love snow as a result.
This is just such a lovely collection of photos -- thank you so much, NYT!
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My parents owned a home built on a hill and in the backyard, which was terraced, all of us gained speed as we hit the second bump. At the bottom of the hill was a split-rail fence with a gate, through which we either swooshed by or dismounted before we crashed. Only when the kids were very young did parents intrude. Lovelyl
Alas, when I moved to Ohio with my young daughter, I discovered that we had to DRIVE to a hill in order to go sledding. Phooey.
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It's a small miracle that I and my friends all survived our sledding shenanigans as children. Trees were hit, people were hit, we slid out into roads, we slid out onto ice covered ponds, and we had snowmobiles to drag us about 40 mph on a toboggan. We also hooked onto car bumpers when the roads were iced over, jumped off roofs into snow, and had 'king of the mountain' battles on 30 foot snowbanks. Ahh...good times.
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@RP Smith Yes! My sisters and I used to slide down a hill that had trees and barbed wire fence at the bottom. It was always important to stop before we hit the fence!
1
In southern Indiana (Bedford), we had great hills at several of the parks, but I was lucky enough to live on an urban street that had a nice hill and a curve halfway down. A good run was to the bottom past the railroad tracks. It seems odd now; we never worried about car traffic (not that there was that much), and the roads were snow-covered: no salt. Wonderful memories.
6
I raised my boys in a small city, Stevens Point, in Central Wisconsin, where the immaculately maintained Iverson Park provided a sledding hill, two toboggan slides, ice skating rink, and cross country skiing trails. If the winters there got long, Saturday afternoons at Iverson were always a delight.
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@Dianne Wow you read my mind, the Iverson slides were the first thing I thought of while reading this article! I was in elementary school in Stevens Point in the early 80s and absolutely loved that park. Moved to Madison for middle school, and had some great hills there as well. What great memories and so much fun.
2
I still have a slightly chipped front tooth from hitting a grassy patch at the bottom of the hill, when my sled stopped suddenly, but my face kept going. I went back up, but knew to keep my distance from the grassy patch--it was also my last belly flop run.
12
Our favorite neighborhood sledding hill of our youth is now bisected by a perpendicular chain link fence, put up by the county to prevent sledding related injuries and lawsuits.
So sad.........
20
In college in Michigan, we would smuggle cafeteria trays from the dining hall and use them to sled in the arboretum on campus. No alcohol required for a great time. Traying, although I guess each campus had a term for the activity.
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@tim Us too, at college in Massachusetts. So fun, very bumpy though -
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@tim Cafeteria trays were also good for "sledding" on wet grass. Long ago and far away at University Park Pa...
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@tim BascomHill UW-Madison...traying down to State St
2
"The most cherished winter pastime of the Upper Midwest still endures, and still lacks any real frills or pesky safety features." This sentence alone sums up the winters of my childhood in northern Iowa, and this article was just what I needed on this busy day. Thank you.
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Growing up in southern Wisconsin, sledding was just what you did in the winter. Along with snowball fights, outdoor hockey, and hot chocolate when you couldn't feel your face anymore.
I still remember my green sled with handles on both sides that, when you pulled them, sent a piece of the handle into the snow. They were supposed to help you turn and/or stop, but I only remember it making my sled flip over. Which I guess was its own kind of fun.
But the metal saucers were the most fun. Just make sure you bail out or stop before you go too far, otherwise the trudge back to the top gets a LOT longer.
9
Not only getting hurt on your own sled but what about getting hit by someone else's sled? Nothing is innocent anymore.
@John Doe When I was a kid, the "big kids" supervised the little kids on the neighborhood sledding hill. They forced everyone to only walk up the far right side of the sledding hill (for safety and also to save wear and tear on the snow in the middle), and then at the top they spaced us out for our starts. The only danger was if you didn't get off the bottom center fast enough. Somehow I doubt if today's kids would either 1) have the leadership to do this, and 2) have the obedience!
3
When I was a kid in the 60s out sledding, my brother was being ganged up on by other kids so I jumped on my sled, and flew down the hill crashing right into them! They went tumbling like bowling pins!! One of my favorite memories, they were stunned a little girl would do that!! Sledding was the best!!
1
Sledding was one of the great winter pastimes for me growing up. My favorite instance was some early March where the ground still had snow, but it had rained and frozen, so there was a layer of ice on the sledding hill (this one was at Lakefront Park in Prior Lake). On my last run of the day, I hurtled down the slick slope, continued on for at least a good hundred feet in the slowdown zone, then lightly crashed into a berm outside the hockey rink. I was fine, thankfully.
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@Connor Feel the Berm?
1