Karen’s Corner

By Karen Barkstrom

Each Friday Mike and I go out to dinner with our “dinner club” — a group of us who have been getting together for years. We used to host dinners in our homes, rotating locations each month from January to November and then go out to dinner for our Christmas celebration.

Now we go out to eat and it’s weekly rather than monthly. We alternate who picks the spot we’re going to — and we’re pretty good at mixing it up — everywhere from the Green Lantern in Copalis Crossing to the Ranch House east of Elma — everything from Mexican, Salvadoran, Italian, barbecue, sushi, good old American diner — you name it, we’ve probably tried it.

Several weeks ago, one of the topics of conversation was the recent snow that had closed down Harbor schools. Steve and John, who grew up in a house at the base of Scammel Hill in Aberdeen, started talking about sledding down the hill in anything from an actual sled to — believe it or not — a refrigerator door! They said the hill was “usually” closed down to automobile traffic because of all the snow — so it was pretty safe.

“A refrigerator door?” I asked. “How did you steer it or slow it down?”

“Oh, we just kind of leaned to one side or the other to keep it on the street and if it got off course there were always the bushes along the side of the road to slow us down!” said John.

If the snow was really deep, the hill was closed to cars but what about the other times when vehicles traveling on the hill might interfere with your activities, I asked.

“Most of the time, we posted a guy at the bottom of the hill to warn the drivers,” Steve replied.

Playing in the snow is so much fun, and my theory is every kid should get that opportunity every winter. Once a year there needs to be enough snow to close down the schools for at least two days. Then it should all melt overnight and that’s enough snow until next winter.

I grew up in Niles, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. We had a ‘forest preserve’ at the end of our street — basically a park with lots of trees that lined the banks of the Des Plaines River. Every weekend from November to March, we neighborhood kids would grab our Flexible Flyer sleds and head for “Dead Man’s Hill.” That’s what we called the part of a trail that led down to the river. There was a curve right at the bottom of the hill and if you weren’t careful, you and your sled would land up in the river. Usually by that time of year, the river was frozen over so it was pretty safe. But at least once a year, someone would end breaking through the ice — at least that’s what the older kids always said to scare the younger ones — that’s why it was called “Dead Man’s Hill”!

After moving out to Kelso, when I was 14, I was very disappointed that we rarely got a decent snowfall. But the kids there had it all figured out. A couple of weekends every winter, we would head up to Mount St. Helens. We’d bring our old-fashioned sleds, toboggans, flying saucers and even inner tubes. We’d spend hours on the slopes, sliding down the gentle hillsides and climbing back up again.

Of course that wasn’t adventure-some enough for my boyfriend Mike and his best friend. They’d bring along the hood of an old car, attach it to the back of the friend’s Studebaker and careen down the snow-covered roads. It was always an unspoken challenge to see who could drive fast enough to throw the rider off and how far they’d fly.

As amazing as it might seem, I don’t remember any major injuries.

At the end of the day, we’d all head up to the Mount St. Helens Lodge and have a cup or two of hot cocoa — the best I’ve ever had — all of us with rosy cheeks, slightly frozen fingers and a lot of smiles.

Nowadays when it snows, I’m perfectly content to sit in my cozy chair in my nice warm family room with a cup of hot, decaffeinated green tea and look at the beautiful white landscape.

But every once in a while the thought creeps into my head, “Wouldn’t it be fun to grab a sled and head for Scammel Hill?”

Karen Barkstrom, The Daily World’s editorial assistant, can be reached at 360-537-3925 or kbarkstrom@thedailyworld.com.