FROSTY THE SNOWMAN

My autobiographical yarns will appear on this blog in chronological order. For the sake of continuity, I am posting this vignette even though Jim McAllister featured it on his blog some time earlier. It's still a cool ride.

FROSTY THE SNOWMAN

In the movie, Citizen Kane, the last word the newspaper tycoon utters before dying is “Rosebud,” the name of his sled. Had they asked me to write the script, it would have read, “Flexible Flyer,” the name that appeared on my sled. It carried me down my hometown’s icy slopes for years, well into my teens.

Hoboken had few hills suitable for sledding, the best one just one block long that sloped north down Castle Point Terrace from atop Ninth Street toward a city park where it dead-ended. The absence of traffic on this street made it an ideal place to coast in safety.

One could choose to ride west down Ninth Street where it intersected Hudson Street. It combined two incentives: a steeper slope and the possibility of getting killed by automotive traffic moving south on Hudson. With luck, I could zip through the intersection and coast down one more block to Washington Street, the city’s main drag.

Eighth Street provided the final choice. It ran parallel to Ninth, from Castle Point Terrace to Hudson, but had less of a slope. It offered riders an additional challenge. At the intersection of Eighth and Hudson Streets stood the beautiful Green Gate arch, made of serpentine rock, a secondary entrance to the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology. It had three portals, a large one for automotive traffic and two small ones for pedestrians. Most kids chose to ride their sleds through the arch’s wide vehicular opening, but the more daring rode through one of its two narrow pedestrian sidewalk openings, disdaining the oft-circulated rumor that a boy had died one year when he misjudged and crashed into the face of the arch.

The rumor did not faze my friend, Jackie ‘Red’ Burke, who was a happy-go-lucky daredevil. While coming home from an afternoon of sledding, we saw a large truck slowly inching its way down the snow-blanketed Eighth Street hill toward the arch. Burke seized the opportunity. He ran, belly flopped, and somehow managed to squeeze himself under the bottom of the truck. The poor driver must have been quite surprised to see some crazy kid zoom out from its front. The city covered the slope with ashes the next day to give vehicles greater traction, and in the process, ended our sledding opportunity.  Perhaps Burke’s wild ride forced the authorities to take this action. 

Global warming may now exist, but during my early boyhood years, winters were very cold. On a particularly frigid day while sledding down Castle Point toward the city park, I began to ride into the side yard of a large single-family home halfway down, thus shortening the long trek back to the top. Not until late that evening did my passion for sledding abate. Frozen stiff, I trudged home where my mother thawed me out with numerous cups of hot tea before sending me to bed.

Sleep came instantly, but so did a fearful nightmare. In it, my sled carried me into that side yard and up to the edge of a bottomless ditch. At the last moment, I managed to steer my way clear of falling into its horrible darkness. Over the years, this same dream kept intruding on my sleep. Sometimes my conveyance was a bike or roller skates rather than the sled. The end of the dream never varied. I would come right up to the edge of that damned black hole, teeter, but never fall in. Freud never explained to me the meaning of this dream.

One memorable winter a large bobsled made an appearance on Castle Point Terrace. Four teens sat down on it while another pushed the sled into motion toward the Tenth Street Park. This chap adroitly hitched a ride by hopping onto the extended runners, keeping his balance by holding onto the shoulders of the last seated rider. I pursued them on my Flexible Flyer. The bobsled zoomed down the hill. At the bottom, the giant sled hit the street curbing, bounced up, rocketed across the sidewalk and crashed through the chicken-wire park fence. The ‘standee’ rider hit the wood railing, waist high. It snapped, and he catapulted into a field of snow beyond. The riders found themselves scattered about, all stunned.  What a wreck! It was great! I don’t think the collision injured any of them too seriously, although the poor guy who broke the railing moaned the loudest. 

I had experienced a similar crash. When I was seven, my brother and three of his college pals decided to go for a very late night toboggan ride in nearby Cliffside Park. My brother decided to bring me (and my Flexible Flyer) along.

We drove to the top of a very steep hill. The night was as silent and the view as beautiful as the Alps. Once there, someone took my sled while my brother sat me down in front of him on the big toboggan, my feet wedged against the steering bar. We raced down a very long slope, heading for a ‘T’ intersection at which point the flight plan called for this rocket to make a right turn and continue downhill.

The steel runners sliced through the frozen snow, making a soft whishing sound. As we neared the intersection, my eyes grew wide as it became apparent we were hurtling toward a wall of snow piled up on the sidewalk. The bobsled hit the curb and I slammed into the embankment head first, like a human torpedo. My brother and the other two riders flipped up and over me. Laughing at the incident, my brother pulled me out unharmed, frightened and about to wet my pants.

“You can pee on the snow bank,” he said, while helping me undo my fly. To my surprise, a certain requisite part of my anatomy needed for this purpose could not be located. The cold had shriveled my apparatus to nothing.

We came home after midnight. I went to bed, unable to decide whether it had been a fun outing. Until impact, it was great. Then, my enjoyment went downhill and sorta petered out.

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