A Christmas Story, Part II, Sledding on Summer Street
By Algie Ray Smith

After they were seated on the brown leather sofa, Grandfather related his story:

The first snow of the winter of 1949 came right after Thanksgiving. Boy! It was a doozy. The snow kept coming and coming and coming for days and stayed until near March. At one time the snow was so deep on Fourth Street that only the center was open one-lane to traffic. It reminded me of one of those tunnels they have in big cities.

The landscape was a virtual wonderland of icy sculptures…a single blanket of whiteness. The temperature had dropped to the mid-20’s, and the four-inch snow that accumulated over the frozen rain that fell first made the sledding excellent.

Some of the older boys had paid a man who lived out near Schochoh to dump more water, a water truck load more, that made the sledding even better. The man was known as the Water Man, but I heard one fella call him Mr. Coleman.

The people had come up and blocked off everything between Ninth Street and Fifth Street so that we had a full four block to sled..and sled we did!

Of course, there wasn’t nearly as much traffic then as it is now, and so there wasn’t much danger from cars if you waited until after 9 p.m. to start sledding. Why, once Sheriff Reuben Kemp came up and watched us sled. We tried to get him to go down on a sled with us, but he declined, saying, “You youngsters stick to your fun; I’ll stick to catching bad guys.”

Usually the only adult in attendance was Coach Jimmy Haynes, who was checking on his team members to make sure none of them were breaking curfew. I think he might have caught guard Ray Gaw a time or two, but I can’t rightly recall.

Two of my buddies, Snack and Frazer, had Western Flyer sleds; but, well, it seems that since my father had had an accident at the stone quarry where he worked, there wasn’t any money left over for trivialities. But I made do with an old round Coca-Cola sign that I found behind the bottling plant on Winter Street. It was a great ‘slider’, but I had to learn to turn my body to steer it.

Several of us were warming our hands around the 55-gallon drum in which someone had built a crackling fire. Bob Ballance and Leon Douglas were there, too; and Bob was asking Leon how he could get the guys to stop calling him Little Lord Fauntleroy. Seems that Bob’s grandmother would take him to Nashville and buy him these fancy clothes…knickers and coats with fur collars and shiny shoes from the Red Goose Store.

There was this one Riley guy who would tease Bob a lot. I think later Bob started wearing clothes like everyone else wore, and the teasing stopped.

Right before we went back to sledding, Snack asked me, “Did y’all hear about the paper routes that are going to be available here in January?”

Frazer and I hadn’t, so Snack filled us in. “There’s to be four routes…but you’.ll need a bicycle ‘cause the routes will be from five to about eight miles in length.”

At that instant another guy, Butch Klein, sailed a snowball at Snack, causing him to duck. He quickly made a snowball of his own and threw it back.

“I have a bike, a Schwinn Phantom,” Frazer interjected. “All I’ll need is a basket, and I can get one, a big deep Wald, from Mr. Hill’s Western Auto.”

“If you’re lucky enough to get a route,” Snack interrupted, holding his wet mittens over the fire to dry them. He looked at me. “What about you, Johnny? You gonna try for a paper route?”

I’m glad he called me Johnny. I didn’t care to be called Jonathon, which several of the teachers liked to pin one me, especially Mrs. Diana Evans, who was the librarian at the high school. We all shared the same library back then.

I hung my hand and muttered, “I’d love to have a paper route. My family could use the money…but I don’t have a bike.”

“That’s no problem,” Frazer slapped me on my shoulder. “Christmas is coming. Just hint around to your parents that you would like a bike, that with a bike you could earn your own money. They’d want you to do that, wouldn’t they?”

I knew that they didn’t understand that “the geese weren’t getting fat” at my house this year. If I couldn’t afford a sled, I certainly couldn’t afford a bicycle. Course, I intended to ask Mom for a bike anyway on the chance that she had some extra money stashed away somewhere. If I had a bicycle, I could pay her back.

“Your slider is a BLAST!” Frazer yelled suddenly as he grabbed my Coca Cola sign. “You take my sled. I’ll race you down.”

I’m afraid poor Frazer didn’t know anything about riding sliders. He ended up hitting the curb at the corner of Eighth Street and careened down the street all the way over to Main, where Pat Kirkpatrick was making a snowman on his grandfather’s frontlawn. Meanwhile, I was able to sled all the way down to the bus station on Frazer’s nifty sled.

“Did you go and tell your Mom about needing a bike?” Marc asked. “What did she say?”

“Hold on to your britches. I’m coming to that part,” Grandfather laughed.

Marc, who was always a little antsy, had become interested in Grandfather’s story; and he always wanted to know how stories ended. Sometimes, he would read the last page of a story to see what happened and then go back and read the beginning. He didn’t care to be left guessing.

“Did you get the paper route, Ol Pa? How much did you earn delivering papers? What paper was it? Did you have a lot of customers? I’ll bet they gave you tips and presents at Christmas. I didn’t know you could keep geese in town.”

Grandfather shook his head. “Yes. Enough. The Park City Daily News. Yes, over an hundred. Lots of cash tips and candy…and oh, hand knitted scarves and gloves, too. And that part about geese getting fat is from an old saying my own grandfather taught me. Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Winter is coming, and the geese are getting fat. Can you put a dime in the poor man’s hat? If you haven’t a dime, a nickel with do. If you haven’t a nickel, then God pity you.”

Grandfather reached into a sweater pocket and removed a piece of Double Bubble gum. He unwrapped it and handed it to Marc. “Here. Chew on this, but don’t throw the funny away. If it’s one I don’t have, I’ll put it in my collection.”

Marc began to chew vigorous on the pink glob. Grandfather treated himself to a green Lifesaver before he continued. Funny how almost everything changes, Grandfather mused, these green Lifesavers were once apple flavored. Now, it tastes like watermelon.