Smooth Ice, Soft Snow and Special Stories: Step Ten

Wisconsin is a winter wonderland. For some unknown reason cold really doesn’t affect your attitude when you’re a kid. It just means that when you can no longer shoot basketballs in the hoop hanging from the garage because your mittens are starting to get slippery you’ll have to switch to ice skating instead. When we first moved to Lancaster Avenue Dad flooded the backyard for us to have our own ice skating rink. After a few years though there just wasn’t enough room for the three of us to fit on the rink, and things were worse if one of us asked a friend to come over and skate. Even when you were alone two strides and you were on the other side. Fortunately, Milwaukee parks and recreation froze over a section of a couple of neighborhood parks. While locations varied from year to year I believe the smoothest one was about a half mile away on the other side of Hampton. Each rink had a shack with a Franklin stove at one end and benches running along the walls. Kids, and some adults too, would go in the shack to put on their skates. Later, they’d return to warm up a little before going back out on the ice or to put their shoes on for the hike back home. Shoes were left there using the honor system. One time I beat this girl to the shack and sat on her shoes so she couldn’t find them. She looked all around the room, up and down the benches passing me several times. I kind of liked her, so when I saw she was starting to get too upset I stood up to leave and said as innocently as possible, “Oh, look. Here they are.” Now, zipping around the ice rink with your friends was a lot of find, but sometimes it was even more fun to play in the snow. At Grantosa Drive we would play tackle football on the basketball courts when they were covered with enough snow. Whenever we played everyone wanted Tommy on his team. Not only was he a 10 year old in a 15 year old body, he could block several kids at once. One time, however, when he was on the opposing side, someone decided to make Tommy a running back. The other kids just let him lumber by, but I had heard one of the smaller Packers say in an interview on TV that if you hit the big guys low there own weight will bring them down. So, I dove in the snow and wrapped my arms around as much of Tommy’s legs as I could reach, and he did come down…right on top of me. As soon as he could get himself up he was bending down in the snow and making sure I was all right. Soft snow makes an excellent cushion. A good example is what occurred after one massive snowfall. Nearly two feet had fallen, and the drifts in the backyard were as deep as four feet. A sudden drop in temperature caused the top layer to freeze into a glistening crust. By burrowing into one of the drifts I was able to create my own igloo. Thick walls of snow insulated the room surrounding my body, and despite the sub-zero temperatures outside my thoughts were this was perfect preparation for my life as an arctic explorer. I wanted to sleep in my sleeping bag inside the igloo. My mother, being older and wiser, was having none of it. Despite offers of to do extra chores and let my sister choose whatever she wanted to watch on television, I still ended up sleeping soundly in a warm bunk bed that night. Yet, to this day I wonder how it might have been to sleep under several feet of snow. Please comment and share your winter tales.