Remember those roll-up plastic sleds that you could never slide straight on? Or the plastic disk, that again, you could never steer straight with? I don’t know why, but it seems like those were the only sleds we had growing up. Dad would mound up some snow with the skid steer in our driveway, and that was our snow hill. When I was probably around Willie’s age, I remember riding on the back of my dad’s snow mobile as our family made our way to the Ding-a Ling supper club in Hanover WI. On the return trip home, in the dark, as I held on to the back of my dad on the snowmobile, I would imagine the Abominable Snowman, (from Rudolf) in all his stop-motion animation fury, chasing after us…
When my sister and I were a little older, my dad bought us an old Arctic Cat Cheetah 295 that we would bomb around with,out in the snow covered hay fields. Man, that was so much fun! We would blast through the snow drifts heaped against the snow fence, and jump over driveway culverts in the roadside ditch. After a few hours of riding around, we would sometimes ride up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, up on the hill over looking the family farm, and grandma Jean would make us some hot chocolate and serve it with Oreos. As I look back on it, I am very thankful for the experience of growing up in the country. And for snowmobiles….
