Sliding around in the snow and on the ice just isn't what it used to be. When I drive past Parleys Park near my home in Parleys Canyon, there are kids on all kinds of fancy sleds and Fiberglas toboggans. And most of them seem to have their parents right there to make sure they don't get too reckless.
Not much like the winter fun I remember. But then, we had horses. And lots of space.My friends and I all lived on farms and, when we were kids, there were sleds made of wood -- big clunky contraptions on metal runners. No Fiberglas. Nothing high-tech. None of us owned one.
And we had a unique problem when it came to sliding on snow: There were no hills. It was all flat farmland, and the closest thing to a hill was miles away. So we improvised.
A family of five boys that lived a mile or two from me came up with what turned out to be a great idea. Though if any of our parents had seen us doing it, we'd all have been grounded. But farm parents didn't play with their children the way parents do today. The fields were where they went to work, and when the work was done, they weren't about to go out there for fun.
So much the better for us.
The Rhodes boys found a round, sort of concave lid off an old wringer washing machine and attached a long rope -- maybe 30 feet long -- to its handle. They saddled up a horse and attached the other end of the rope to the saddlehorn.
Then each of us in turn climbed into the washing-machine lid -- which was about 2 or 2 1/2 feet across and slippery -- and tried to hold on to the edges of it. The boy on the horse would then get the animal running straight ahead, pulling the kid on the lid.
I remember the first time I tried it. I must have been 8 or 9 years old and small for my age. So I fit nicely in the lid. With that horse galloping across the snowy plowed field, I felt like I was airborne most of the time, snow and ice flying back into my face.
Then came the fun part. The kid turned the horse in a big circle -- still at a gallop -- so that the rope pulled taut in a huge arc, and the lid with me on it left the ground for good.
I had no way to estimate how fast that washing-machine lid got going, but it felt like 60 mph. There was no way to really hold on, and nobody did for long. When I hit the ground, I rolled and bounced for a long time -- a very long time.
Nobody was worried about whether the one who just got dumped was hurt; they were too busy fighting over who got to ride next. I limped back to the group, bruised but elated -- high on adrenalin and the thrill of courting death or serious injury.
There were other wintertime activities. The ball field at the church would be flooded in early winter so we could ice skate. Even better was skating on a pond on the far side of the Malad River, which was another adventure because we had to cross the river on an old wooden power pole that had fallen across it.
The pole got icy and didn't present a very secure platform for crossing anyway because it was just a big round log. One winter day I told my mother I was playing board games at a friend's house, and three of us headed for the pond. Two dogs went along, and as I was making my way across the river, my friend's dog saw something on the other side and just couldn't wait to find out what it was.
He ran past me on the log, knocking me into the rapidly flowing river. Thankfully, I managed to grab the log and didn't get washed downstream. And I WAS thanking my guardian angels, because I couldn't swim a stroke.
The Malad River ran full both winter and summer because in those days it was used as a disposal site for sewage from surrounding towns. It was full and it was not the most pleasant-smelling water I'd ever been in. But at the time, I was more worried about drowning. I grasped the log desperately and sort of doggy paddled to the far bank.
My friends, of course, thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, but as they were continuing across, my dog got revenge for his owner. Seeing me thrashing around in the water and being very protective, he decided to help out, and in getting to me, knocked my two friends into the water.
It really would have been hilarious, except for the fact we were all wet and freezing and still had to get back across the log to go home -- several miles on our bikes. Then there was the problem of getting our clothes dry and getting rid of the odor, since each of our mothers thought we were safe at somebody else's house, playing games. In the end we went to another friend's house whose mother wasn't home and got cleaned up. Mom still doesn't know.
I'm sure kids today have fun on their safe sledding hills and recreation-center ice rinks, but it's nothing like the good ol' winters.
Deseret News features editor Marilyn Karras may be reached by e-mail at karras@desnews.com