Slide For Life (youngsters:non fiction, 1051 words)
Author: Lou Hill	Added: Apr 02 2002	Views/Reads: 4510/2559	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Winter fun in Vermont

SLIDE FOR LIFE 

A recent snowstorm left a blanket of snow on the steep hill outside my
house and jarred a few of the memory cells in my brain that still 
function.  It brought back some of my experiences on Enosburg's winter 
roads back when I was young and extremely foolish. 

In those days Buster and Lil Garrett lived next door to my grandmother,
Ada Hill.  I could often be found over at their house playing with 
their daughter Avis.  Actually I tried to keep up with Avis, even then 
she was a very determined leader. 

One of the Garrett family's prized possessions was a	 travois sled.  To
those of you who are unfamiliar with a travois, let me explain.  A 
travois is a homemade version of	 a bobsled that has been crossed with 
a luge, but with none of the refinements and certainly none of the 
safety features of either. 

It was made from a large 2 X 12, about eight feet long.  It had a set of
fixed runners in back with a second set of turnable runners in front.  
The whole contraption could be steered with an old automobile steering 
wheel.  There was no front nose for streamlining or protection, no 
hand-holds and no brakes!! 

Since the travois had narrow steel strips on the runners and
considerable weight when loaded with five or six kids, it sank into 
loose snow like a milk truck in mud season.  Therefore we needed to 
find  smooth, icy runs similar to the ones used by bobsleds.  The 
closest we could find in Enosburg were the back roads. 

Fortunately, the ideal road was close by, the old Enosburg Center Road,
which gave us a run of about a mile.  Since the road was always kept 
plowed and would become hard packed and quite slippery after very 
little traffic, it made a perfect run. 

A group of us including Avis, some of the Corron and LaCross kids, and
Avis's ever-present companion, her dog Freckles, would drag the sled up 
past the Grange hall to the top of the hill.  At the top, we would all 
pile on. 

Avis would usually steer.  She was fearless and, besides, it was her
travois.  I would get stuck in the middle since I was the smallest (at 
that time) and the scaredest. 

One of the bigger kids would push us off.  By the time we negotiated the
corner by the Grange Hall, we would have built up a pretty good head of 
steam. 

To me it always seemed supersonic, but it really wasn't all that fast
because the gravel and stones had usually worked up through the 
hard-packed snow and provided enough friction to slow us down.  Also, 
some of the chicken-hearted (usually me) would drag our feet. 

If we were still going too fast as we approached the main road, we would
either ram into a snowbank or tip the sled over.	Fortunately we never 
broke our necks or other important bones and we always seemed to stop 
before we slid out into the main road. 

Alas, I haven't seen a travois in years.  But I have seen another type
of suicide machine that we used to play with as kids. We called them 
"skooters," but they have several different names such as "ski jack" or 
"jack-jumpers."  Avis's father made her one by nailing a seat made of 2 
X 4's onto an old barrel stave. 

Skooters required a good sense of balance, lots of loose snow, a steep
hill, and no brains.  They were steered by leaning and luck. Some of 
the more adept riders could make runs from top to bottom without 
falling off.  Needless to say, I rarely made runs longer than ten feet, 
usually wiping out in a cloud of snow. 

The accepted method of stopping a skooter was falling off or running
into a large immovable object.  Since we were using them in loose snow, 
there was little danger of doing permanent damage to ourselves. 

While I managed to survive the travois and skooter sliding exploits with


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