Let's All Go Sledding

Jazzy1

Jazzy1

Cheers!
f661daa698031dae975d96e9db0b9d8a.jpg


Did you have one?

Where was your favorite place to go sledding?
 

We had a collection of old broken down sleds, aluminum saucers, and even an old toboggan.

They all took a back seat to an old John Deere tractor tire inner tube.

1765280128732.jpeg
We were only allowed to use it when our father or older brothers were around to blow it up for us on an old and very scary air compressor.

We had our choice of hills around our grandmother’s old farmhouse.
 
I grew up in West Virginia, we had great sledding. My next door neighbor lived at the top of a very steep hill-- about an acre straight down. We k
vintage-photo-of-toddler-and-dog.jpg
ids would all sled there till we were exhausted and covered in cold wet hives. We used sleds, boxes, and trash can lids.
 
Last edited:
KSav said:
I loved sledding so much as a kid! We used to go to Wescott Reservoir in my hometown of Syracuse. Here's a photo.

View attachment 472159
Click to expand...
Still popular and still illegal! 😉🤭😂

1765281646084.jpeg

In 1924, an overzealous police chief issued an order to every patrolman in Syracuse: If you see a child sledding down a public hill or on a city street, stop them. Take the sled and send the kid home.

It was just the latest escalation in a years-long crackdown on sledding in the 1920s, brought about by a series of injuries and at least two deaths as kids slid into increasingly busy roadways. Police stationed officers on the city’s hills. Newspapers ran stories photos of battered and bruised children. Some mayors sought a compromise, like closing the streets at the bottom of big hills after a snow storm. But the sledding continued, to the chief’s dismay.

By 1933, officials had seen enough: sledding would be officially banned in the city of Syracuse.
 
Della said:
I grew up in West Virginia, we had great sledding. My next door neighbor lived at the top of a very steep hill-- about an acre straight down. We k
vintage-photo-of-toddler-and-dog.jpg
ids would all sled there till we were exhausted and covered in cold wet hives. We used sleds, boxes, and trash can lids.
Click to expand...

It’s going to be tough to beat this picture❤️❤️

I had an old sled similar to the one @Jazzy1 posted. I would sled down the bank barn hill or on the other side of the barn down through the apple trees towards the creek. Thankfully I always stopped long before I got to the creek because that hill wasn’t very steep.
 
I was 7 years old (almost 8) in this photo. Most of the kids in my neighborhood where I grew up went to the "cow pasture" (don't know why it was called that - I never saw a cow there). Some called it "Moolah's Field" (also not privy to that designation), but it had a hill - that's the important feature. It was at the northern end of the street. I had that sled for a long time, but sold it about 10 years ago. It wasn't a Flexible Flyer, but I can't remember now what it was.

sledding.jpg
 
My childhood sledding hill was a steep long section of logging road that ended in a sharp right turn onto a short run out to a blackberry vine patch at the edge of a creek. You had to start dragging your toes early enough to stop whatever you were riding (sled, car hood, cardboard sheet,etc) before you got ripped by berry vines or dunked in the creek. You could also just bail off and simply let your sliding device bury itself into the berry patch.
 
I did get hit by a car while sledding when I was 4 years old. It wasn't at the locale I previously posted. It was at, what was then a school, on the next block. The hill there ended on a road. Some kids would stand at the bottom and yell when it was safe to come down. I guess they misjudged when I went down. I was hit by a neighbors car.
Fortunately the sled I had at the time took most of the impact, but I had back problem for a long time. I think my dad sued the neighbor, but she rally couldn't have helped it - the road there was on a hill itself and she couldn't have seen over it. There's a fence there now and the school building is there, but not a school anymore. The red arrow is where the kids sledded. You can see it's where the road is on a rise.

school.jpg

This is what it looks like from the other direction:

2.jpg
 
Last edited:
Llynn said:
My childhood sledding hill was a steep long section of logging road that ended in a sharp right turn onto a short run out to a blackberry vine patch at the edge of a creek. You had to start dragging your toes early enough to stop whatever you were riding (sled, car hood, cardboard sheet,etc) before you got ripped by berry vines or dunked in the creek. You could also just bail off and simply let your sliding device bury itself into the berry patch.
Click to expand...

What a GREAT story and visual 😇😇

can all of you with these great stories just imagine today’s children doing some of this stuff lol lol It would all be deemed too dangerous to try yet, somehow we all managed to survive to tell our stories.❤️❤️

I may have to backpedal a little bit on what I just said, based on @debodun ’s post #13🫣🫣
 
Down here in Florida, I don’t know of any places to go. After I turned 60 I stopped skiing because my doctor was telling me to be careful not to break any bones because of age and all the other things that go with getting older. I felt like it was a father-son talk. However, I agreed about the skiing, so I sold everything at a very cheap price.

We had a place when I lived in VA. We would take our sleds, boogie boards, sheets of cardboard, inner tubes and other items. I’m not sure of the name of the place, but it was a man-made hill with snow made by using the cannons that’s used at ski resorts.
 
Last edited:
Oh, I loved sledding as a kid.

I went sledding up on Mount Hood back about 25 years on big inner tubes down a hill. Hard to control and I did once run right into a guy who was standing near the bottom of the hill with his back turned (bad idea). I was screaming at him to get out of the way but he didn't move. WHAM!

The last time I went tobogganing was at Lake Placid. You could book a ride down the track and then you shot out onto the frozen lake for what seemed like forever.

Have you seen the commercial where the three old ladies are reminiscing about sledding and then one of the orders "butt pillows" and off they go! Really cute.

Not much sledding here in Florida except over in Tampa where they have an attraction where you CAN go sledding. It isn't a cheap thrill, though....
 
jujube said:
Oh, I loved sledding as a kid.

I went sledding up on Mount Hood back about 25 years on big inner tubes down a hill. Hard to control and I did once run right into a guy who was standing near the bottom of the hill with his back turned (bad idea). I was screaming at him to get out of the way but he didn't move. WHAM!

The last time I went tobogganing was at Lake Placid. You could book a ride down the track and then you shot out onto the frozen lake for what seemed like forever.

Have you seen the commercial where the three old ladies are reminiscing about sledding and then one of the orders "butt pillows" and off they go! Really cute.

Not much sledding here in Florida except over in Tampa where they have an attraction where you CAN go sledding. It isn't a cheap thrill, though....
Click to expand...
Lake Placid sledding sounds great.
I loved that commercial with the ladies going sledding. I could relate. I have three of those cushions on my uncomfortable chairs in my house.
 
Speaking of sledding, when I was a student nurse and doing my communicable disease discipline at another hospital, I had a boy who had contracted tetanus from sledding. Another kid's Flexible Flyer steel runner had rammed into his leg, causing a deep puncture wound. Most of us only learned about this disease in a classroom, but never encountered it.

The doctors had to treat each symptom individually, and it was awful to see. Unfortunately, when the accident occurred, it wasn't treated properly. But, I must say, that boy bore it all like a trooper. The pain he endured was heart rendering.

When my son was growing up, I always cautioned him to be very careful when out sleigh riding, and he was after I told him all about what I saw. I still prefer the Flexible Flyer for sledding, unless I go tobogganing. Which I don't anymore, of course.
 
jujube said:
I did enjoy the "saucer sleds" when they came out but, like inner tubes, there's not much steering to be done.

I remember when the hood of an old car made a good sled, and, of course, there's always a flattened cardboard box until it gets soggy.
Click to expand...
Plastic trays swiped from the school cafeteria work pretty well until your butt reaches middle age, don’t ask! 😉🤭😂
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top