Winter in Chicago was occasionally memorable. There was the blizzard of ’79, when I looked out my bedroom window to find a four-foot snow drift covering the flat-top roof of the carport. We were out with snow shovels at two in the morning, clearing the roof. Then finishing it up by jumping off the roof into the six-foot deep pile of snow.
I tend to remember the ice. The farmer’s field behind the house would flood at the edges, then freeze over, making slick sheets of ice over deeper pools of liquid. Steve and I would take turns walking across the ice, pushing our luck as cracks pinged and shot across the sheets.
One thing that you didn’t do too often in South Holland was sled. Illinois is remarkably flat. So if you want to hop on a piece of regulation plastic, and go whooshing down some steep hillside, you are in for either a complete disappointment, or a very brief almost-thrill.
Two blocks from our house, mankind had intervened on the flat landscape by producing a pair of terrain elements that offered a bit of character. The first was the Sibley Blvd bridge over the C&EI Railroad yard, and the second was the local water tower…which unlike many of the water vessels in the Chicago area, was more of a giant domed tank buried in the ground. The embankment of the bridge was very steep, and littered with brush and … litter. A ride down the embankment began fast, and ended just as abruptly in a small drainage ditch that paralleled the gravel road that ran along the perimeter. A ride down that embankment went very quickly, and then involved walking nearly a half-block to go back around to the sidewalk, back up the roadway, over the rail and back down the hill. It wasn’t so much sledding, as falling with style. The walk-to-thrill ratio was too far out of whack to bother.
The water tank on the other hand, had a lot more potential. No slope to speak of at the peak, gradually getting steeper as you headed out toward the edges. The tank itself was surrounded by a grassy hill that sloped down into one of those icy pond spots at the edge of the farm field. There was only one small detail that kept it from being perfect. The top of the tank extended out of the ground a good three feet – that is to say, a perfect three foot drop from the edge of the concrete slope, to the grassy slope below. But when the wind was just right, the snow would drift along the edge, and create a continual slope of snow between the edge of the roof, and the ground. Instant sled hill!
Unfortunately, sledding was such a rare occurrence that nobody in the neighborhood even owned a sled. We certainly didn’t have one. And so it was that Steve and I found ourselves standing at the base of the tank, looking at the slope of snow drifted against the side and rooting around the drainage ditch looking for something to serve as a make-shift toboggan. I thought I found something: a round, red plastic lid, just big enough to plant your butt in, and worn smooth. I carried it up to the top of the tank, sat down in it, and scooted toward the drift. I began sliding, then started to spin. The lid didn’t follow a straight course, and I found myself now sliding at a pretty good clip right over the three-foot drop-off!
So, in a complete seated position, I flew off the edge of the tank, dropped abruptly straight down, compressing all the weight of my upper body straight down my spine and jamming it down to my tailbone. I don’t know the technical term for what happened, but I can describe the sensation. I was gripped by pain as if I had been socked in the gut, and curled up in a fetal position on the ground. The only sound I could make was a long moaning exhale. When I ran out of breath, I tried to inhale, and to my horror, discovered that my lungs would not oblige. I could only exhale, but could not force myself to breathe in.
Steve came sliding over the edge of the drop-off and hunkered down next to me. He took one look at my face, and exclaimed. “I know what to do! You’ve got to straighten out and lay flat on the ground. If you don’t do that, you’re going to die!”
Well, that didn’t sound good.
So I ignored the agony and slowly uncurled myself, rolling over so I was flat on my back. Suddenly the pressure and pain released, and I was able to draw in a precious lungful of cold winter air.
“There you go. Just rest there a second. You’ll be fine.”
After a couple minutes I sat up. Steve was sitting cross-legged in the snow, watching me. “How did you know I needed to straighten out to breathe?”
He grinned at me. “The same thing happened to me yesterday when I tried to ride that lid down the tank.”
“You already knew it wouldn’t work?” I asked in disbelief.
Steve shrugged. “Well, I knew it wouldn’t kill you.”
This sort of pay-it-forward wisdom is common with kids. The following autumn, our family was spending Halloween in Upper Michigan, and the fall colors were at their peak. Leaves were everywhere, littering yard after yard along the lake. Our friends Doug and Dan, two brothers who lived on the lake were with us, and we were asking people if they wanted help raking leaves.
Our goal was to make the highest leaf pile we could manage, and do something silly, like drive a bike into the pile. As we collected an impressive mound beneath a maple with low branches, we realized what we wanted to try. A pile of leaves six feet tall should be ample cushioning to catch a falling body. Using logic that only children can credit, we arrived at the decision that Dan, being the youngest and smallest of the group would be the first to jump into the pile.
Dan climbed onto a branch a few feet above the top of the pile, and executed a perfect butt-first fireman’s plunge into the pile.
From the sidelines, we watched Dan in the tree. We watched the pile. We watched Dan hit the top of the pile. And then, like a diver cutting seamlessly into water, Dan disappeared beneath the surface of the pile, barely causing a ripple. We watched. We waited. Dan did not emerge. After a few more seconds, almost as one, we dove at the pile and started tearing it apart, trying to find our fallen comrade. And find him we did: curled up in a fetal position executing a long moaning exhale, with his eyes bulging out of his skull.
“Hold it!” I cried, “I know what to do. Dan, you’ve got to straighten out and lie flat on your back, or you’re going to die!”
This was one of many incidents where I credit Steve’s wisdom. I still wonder if Dan ever got a chance to pass that little nugget on to someone else.