It’s snowing outside just a little as I write. It’s the kind of snow some old-timers might call a three footer – three feet between flakes. There is still snow on the ground from recent storms and my road is snowpacked. It has made me think of “hooking cars.” Whenever streets were snowpacked when we were elementary school age, we boys in my neighborhood would look for opportunities to catch hold of the back bumper of a slowly moving car and use the car to pull us along while we slid on our feet.
Cars had steel bumpers and bumper guards. They were all rear wheel drive and would fishtail easily in slick conditions. Probably the added drag of a small boy or two was undetectable to the driver, but if he found us out his was likely to be angry.
It seemed a safe sort of play. I don’t remember hearing of anyone hurt doing it. I doubt we ever get up to twenty miles and hour and we were very close to the ground. When we slipped off we kept sliding on the slippery road, not always on our feet. I at least never thought about sliding into an oncoming car or being run over by a following car unable to stop.
This sport seemed to last all winter long. I know that not all streets were paved then, and I know too that the gravel road that currently runs about three miles from my house to the nearest pavement is still covered with packed snow while the paved road is completely dry. It may have been colder then and there was certainly less traffic in town to wear off the snow. Few families had two cars and many didn’t even have one. One man on my paper route had a nearly new car, a 1950 Chevy I think, which he took out his garage only on the weekend, and probably only in warm weather.
Another used-to-be is ice skating. I skated at the pond at City Park and at the much larger pre-freeway Lake Clara as well as Lake Minnequa. My most recent outdoor skating memory was of a year when the level of Lake Minnequa rose high enough to flood the empty lots just west of the buildings on “The Strip,” on Lake Avenue. Tom Perkins, his sister Linda and his grandfather and I skated one night on the frozen lot. Gramps was clearly the best skater of that group. Tom and I were probably in college.
During the winter of our seventh grade year, perhaps the eighth, Lake Minnequa froze thick enough that a guy drove his small car out on it once or twice. Several years after that I was riding my brother’s bike on the small part of the lake right next to Lake Avenue and as far north of the Minnequa Club as water went. That part was filled in to make parking space some time later. Riding on ice was fun until the ice broke. Luckily the water was less than three feet deep and I was able to get out and ride home quickly. Both the bike and I were not much worse for the dunking.
Jeff Arnold
