Winter Outdoors At 28 Ludwig Rd.

The dooryard at our house.  Photo by June Sundgren Mita  ca. 1972

     Winters during the 50's and 60's were spent differently from our modern day mushroom existance.  I say mushroom because so many barely poke their noses out today when snow flies and cold temperatures become the norm.  We were not allowed to spend our entire day inside with T.V's or games.  Our parents made sure life was made utterly miserable if we chose to stay in, setting us up with a ton of chores and other unpleasant activities.  So our answer was to head outside as soon as breakfast was in our bellies.
     We had to have at least 5 sets of mittens, 3 pairs of pants, two jackets, 3 hats, 4 scarves and 3 pairs of boots.  All our extras were kept in the basement until the set we had on got so wet they had to be changed.  Our friends would all troop in when the ice and snow was so encrusted on our mittens that we couldn't even move them.  Then we would all do quick changes, lay the wet clothes on the ping pong table, and go back outside. 

                                                     The Sled Run

  Part of the sled run.  ca.1972.  Photo by June Mita Sundgren

    We were always on the lookout for the best, most dangerous sled run in the neighborhood.  Our house, unlike everyone else's, was built on a huge hill that started by the road and went steeply down toward the woods in the back.  We actually had hills on all sides.  In the front, was the baby hill.  This went down from the driveway to the house.  That was the hill that my sister Melanie used until she was about 4.  It came with its own dangers because if it was too slippery, you could slide too fast and hit the house.

The west hill.  Melanie on the rock.  ca. 1970  Photo by June Sundgren Mita

     When Melanie got around 5 she graduated
to the west hill.  This hill was on the porch side of the house and ran toward the back.  The hill was not all that steep and gave her a run of about 70 feet.  The best hill, though, was the one every kid in the neighborhood came by to use.  That was on the east side of the house.  Melanie did not use that hill until she was about 8.  The reason was because not only could the hill be fast, but it was also treacherous, made more so by the boys creativity.
     The boys, primarily my brother Craig and Bill Darling, would go out at night when the temperature was around 15, and they would bring out buckets of water from the basement.  They would spend a good 2 or 3 hours pouring water on the snow to freeze it into ice.  They would also pile the snow into hills, like ski moguls. to make ramps along the run.
     It started straight, but midway in the backyard, there would be a sharp curve that the boys would bank up, mimicking a bobsled run.  Then it would redirect the sled toward the woods.  The boys had actually cleared a trail through the woods, which turned so sharply to avoid the brook that it was what we called the wipeout zone.  The curve had small trees growing right where it turned.  If you didn't guide the sled correctly at that point, you would either hit the trees with your hip, or you would bullet over the snow bank and land right in the brook, getting completely soaked if it wasn't frozen.  I can attest to the fact that I hit those trees on numerous occasions, and it may have actually damaged my pelvis so that one side is shorter than the other.
     The run would end at the Horhorouny's house.  They had built a huge pond at the end of the run.  There was a large hill that went up at the end of the run, and if you were going fast enough you would jump over the hill, sail across space, then land on the pond.  If the pond was not frozen, when you got to the end of the run, you would have to flip the sled, so that you were either off of it or on your back, in order to prevent yourself from landing in the water.  Once Mr. Horhorouny realized we were using the pond as part of the run, he forbid us to land on it any longer.  So when we got to the end, if we couldn't hang on to the sled when we flipped off of it, the sleds would go over the small hill and go spinning across the ice, empty of its occupants, at which time we would still have to go onto the pond to fetch the sled. 
    That run ran perhaps 1/4 mile from the top of our hill to the Horhorouny's pond.  There was no run like it anywhere.  Most of the kids were used to going through an open field, but with our dangers, from trees to brooks to ponds, it was a challenge to get it right.  Of course we added even more fastness to the run by taking wax and rubbing it on the blades of our sleds.  We would also spend a good 1/2 hour to get any rust off the blades with steel wool  Whatever we could do to make the run as fast as we could, we did. 
     The other place we often sledded on was right on the road.  Our house was at the top of the second hill of Ludwig Rd.  The hill to get on the road from Rt. 140 was very steep, and when it snowed nobody could drive up it until it was plowed.  So we would take our sleds and ride them down the road to the Horhorouny's again.  As soon as the plow trucks came we had to stop, but it was a good place to slide in a pinch before the road became passable by cars. 

                           
                                               Of Snow Forts and Tunnels

     My brother Craig always seemed to have a battle streak in him.  He was very competitive and always wanted to get the better of anyone who challenged him.  He had a way, though, of persuading his sisters to go along with his battle plan, calling it fun.  He had many ways of competing, from chess matches to arm wrestling to races on bicycles.  However in the winter, his favorite form of competition was the old fashioned snow ball fight.
     We would call the boys and the girls in the neighborhood and convince them to come to our house to build snow forts.  We had a flat area directly in back of the house that was about 300 feet wide.  That is where we would build our battle plain.  It would take the better part of 3 hours to build a fort worthy of a snow ball fight.  The girls, primarily Kathi Horhorouny, Brenda Moneypenny, Sheryl Darling, and me,  would start making our snow walls.  We would roll the snow into balls and then try to build them up into a wall.  We were not the best construction workers.
     The boys would take much longer.  They would smooth the balls into a solid flat wall, and they would add side walls as well.  On occasion when the snow was really deep, they would build a lookout of snow behind the wall and climb up into it to see behind our fort.  They would painstakingly create peep holes in the wall that allowed them to see when we were ready to throw a snow ball.  Of course they also liked to dip their snowballs into water, and let them freeze into icy balls that were meant to break down our fort walls when thrown.  
     I can tell you that I would get bopped in the head or shoulder with one of those icy snowballs.  It would be slowed from hitting my fort wall, but it would hurt pretty bad.
     When the fight commenced, we would be flinging snowballs at the other fort like a pitching machine.  We would usually start with at least 100 snowballs.  We learned quickly how to duck behind our walls when the boys threw the snowballs at us.  The battles would ordinarily end with us girls giving up.  We would be out of snowballs, and couldn't make new ones because the boys always seemed to have extras to throw.  If we were caught trying to get new buckets of snow to make into more ammo, we would get pummeled with a flurry of them being thrown by Craig, Bill Darling or Bill Srodulski.  So we would just fly the white flag, tell the boys to battle between themselves, and go in for steaming cups of hot chocolate.  The boys would shortly follow, strutting like proud peacocks that they had once again defeated us.  Of course, we let them win.
     Another building activity we all liked to do was extremely dangerous, but nothing ever happened to us despite many warnings from our parents.  We liked to build tunnels at the side of the roads, in the mounds of snowbanks left by the plow trucks.  We would start by using a shovel to gouge a hole into the semi frozen road edges.  Once we hit soft snow, we would go into the tunnel and dig out the snow.  These tunnels could sometimes be 20 feet long.  We would always construct back doors toward the wooded side of the road just in case we were in the process of building a tunnel and we heard the telltale rumble of a plow truck coming up the road. After we had dug the tunnel as far as we wanted, we would dig out a second entrance to the road, once again using the shovel to get through the frozen tundra of snowbanks. 
     I do remember once building one of the tunnels and I hadn't gotten the back door dug out.  I heard the truck coming up the hill, and I was about 10 feet into the building of the tunnel.  I had very little time to get out of the tunnel.  I ended up pushing up and breaking the ceiling of the tunnel.  Just as the truck was nearly on me, I was able to pop out of the ceiling and run into the woods.  That trucks blade was within 6 feet of me.  If I hadn't been able to break the ceiling, I wouldn't be here today writing this. 
     Snow angels were always dotting our yards during the winter.  We made angel after angel, then trounced down the snow between them to connect them with trails through the snow.  One time when I was around 5, which would have been 1962, the snow was so deep that we could barely get out of the basement.  We had a covered porch area at the back door to the basement, and when we opened the door, we had to walk up the snowbank to get into the yard.  The snow angels that year were made just on the top of the snow.  No matter how much we swung our legs and arms, there was no grass to be seen in the impressions of the angels that year.
      Our family seemed made for winter.  We could figure out any problem, such as getting a dead car battery to start without jumper cables.  My dad would push the car onto the road, my mother would be driving, and with Craig's and my help, we would all push the car fast down the hill.  From the momentum, my mother would turn the ignition key on, and the car would start.
     We were also quite good at getting cars and trucks out of snowbanks.  Dad was extremely creative.  The one thing he always made sure he had was a barrel of ice melt, a barrel of sand, and a barrel of cat litter.  Between the three of them, if a car skidded into a snow bank on its own accord, because my mother would never say it was her poor driving skills that caused it to happen, dad would dig, melt, and add traction and the car never stayed stuck for long.

Dad and daughters June and Melanie, ca. 1966.  Photo by Naoma Sundgren