Stacked three high, body upon body upon body, the design
capacity of our Flexible Flyer was being tested on Suicide Hill – because
remember the greater the weight, the greater the speed. We shed bodies through the turns, bumps
and jumps with only Gerry making it to the bottom still on the sled. Jack was off in seconds; I made it half
way down. Part of the game was the
older boys trying to shed the younger ones while the younger clung to anything
they could to ride the Flyer all the way to the bottom.
Brookside Boulevard bisects the city north to south and between 55th and 57th streets in a pocket park there is a hill that drops about 40 or 50 feet down to
Brookside. That hill earned its name because of the choice of runs to test
your nerve, the hazards that'll test your judgment or the number of ways to answer a double dare. Trees, moguls, and icy patches test the skill and the sanity of every sledder. All too
often the only way to stop short of Brookside Blvd is to
wipe out. Now, the Flexible Flyer
may not be as fast as the modern contraptions and saucers that are today’s vehicles
of choice for sledders challenging Suicide Hill, but it carried me through hundreds of runs and won its share of races.
Racing begins with disputes about rules and fairness and ends with arguing fouls involving bumps or crashes on the ride to the bottom. Every race really ends by grabbing the rope and walking back to the top to do it again. Ah, the rope. The rope is an accessory on the Flyer that
makes towing the empty sled really easy but its mere presence leads boys to think of alternative uses. Among the worst was hooking several Flyers in a chain with the lead one’s rope tossed over the
bumper of a ’53 Chevrolet. I was sworn to silence for life, so enough said here. Such activity is one more justification for removing
the upright stanchions from those massive chrome bumpers.
The rope was hazardous in other ways too. If you were ever on a really good run
and decided to shift your weight just a little to the left, great care was
required. If the rope slipped down
and got under one runner, it was like slamming on the brakes on just the
right side wheels of a car. With
luck the result was a spin and a stop with a roll in the snow – time
enough to gather the rope and finish the run. Sometimes luck was riding on someone else’s sled and the
spin became a roll followed by being rammed by the kid behind who couldn’t, or
wouldn’t, turn fast enough to miss you.
The Flexible Flyer is an ingenious device. Getting a good start could be
accomplished by carrying the sled on one side of your body, running and jumping
on the sled like the last pusher on a bobsled team. It was light enough to carry and strong enough to take being
slammed into the icy-snow and jumped on to get a flying start. In the day, I asked mom to save our burnt down candles because they were a perfect size for waxing the runners for maximum
speed.
At the end of the day, ice crystals would circle my face on the edges of my
stocking cap, scarf and earmuffs. My cheeks glowed red like a skier who had spent
too many days on the mountain. Even
my eyebrows glistened as the vapor from my breath blew back in my face as I
sailed down the slope. After
several rolls and spills, my coat and pants were thoroughly wet and my legs
would be as red as Rudolph's nose when I got inside.
It was a great day when you’d ridden the hill enough times that walking
started to look like a cowboy with saddle sores – stiff legged, icy cold and
tired from climbing the hill dozens of times.
On the first day of this new year, grandsons Finn and Joe,
under the watchful eye of their Daddy, conquered Suicide Hill. Mittens and earflaps laced tightly down
and new sleds ready to run marked the new day of the new year. Though not Flexible Flyers, their space
age sleds were fast conveyances for a day of riding the snow packed into a
slick icy cover over Suicide Hill.
Each trip down gave them a memory, a story to be told about the hazards they
encountered, about how fast they flew, and about dodging all the traps the hill could throw their way. When they decide to tell their grandsons about Suicide
Hill they might just remember the day their Daddy rode the slopes with
them and gave them counsel on the mysteries known only to those who grew up
learning every bump and tree that awaits their future runs. They might also have learned that good counsel molds every run, every
climb and every spill into a happy, memorable day.