Bear's Den: "The Christmas Day Toboggan Massacre"

You know, like most folks, I have my good points and bad ones. And no… before you eeeeeven go there… the scale isn´t tipped all that heavily on the ´awful´ side, neither. But, I admit that I´ve never been all that bright. One thing I can say – dumb or not – is that I´ve always known a death trap when I see one. And, a good case in point… is the Christmas Day Toboggan Massacre.

When I was a kid, we didn´t have all the safety features that exist today. Uh-uh, and parents, being mean, malicious and uncaring, didn´t think a thing about this, either. And, we naïve kids just thought this was normal. Um-hmm, little did we know that this horrific maltreatment would scar us for life. Yeah, and about those mean and wayward parents of the bygone days… well, what can be said for such callous disregard for a child´s wellbeing, hmm? Sad… very sad. Well, enough about that. Since we kids didn´t know that we were being mistreated, we rode bikes without helmets, skittered on skateboards without kneepads and went sliding in the wintertime without wearing Kevlar vests, knee braces or DOT approved cranium protection. We didn´t even have an ambulance standing-by. We routinely carried the marks of ´Kiddom´ in those days. Scars, scabs and casts – you name it – the symbols of self-battered youth were evident on almost every kid. Thus, this is the stage setting for the infamous Christmas Day Toboggan Massacre.

Now you might think that a guy like me would like toboggans because they´re an American Indian invention, and I do – if they´re ever used as intended. It was the Algonquin people that came up with this baby and called it a toh-bah-gun. It was originally built as a wood frame with a tight skin covering and designed ´only´ to haul stuff – not anything else. It was the goofy French white arrivals that changed the design and made the whole thing out of wood and then started riding the dangerous craft down steep, snowy hills – not us Injuns.

Anyway, back in the winter of 1966, my family had moved to town for brief spell. There wasn´t much I liked about city dwelling, but there was a nice sliding hill in the local park on the back half of a Lake Michigan dune. It also had what was called a Toboggan Run built on one side. It was avoided… like bathing… by most kids, though. This thing was almost straight up and down. If you were at the bottom and tilted your head to look straight up, to see the very top, you´d lose your balance and fall down backwards. It was steeper than the price of a gallon of milk these days, and it had big, in-set, wooden rails that the toboggan rode in all the way down. A toboggan shot down the thing like an upside-down rocket. It was way too dangerous to sled down and everyone knew it. It was basically just used by big people with their toboggans – usually at night – and was vacant of use in the daytime. Besides, no kid liked a toboggan much. You couldn´t steer it and everyone riding the crazy thing had to know when to lean, and heck, you were at the mercy of the rails to boot. You were just along for the ride. Nah – let the grown-ups have them and their dumb run, we figured – that was fine with us.

So, during an average sledding day, kids would sit on the bottom rails to re-do their footwear. You often had to pull back on plastic bread wrappers, used to slide the snow boots on, or put back on socks that had come off feet, or re-do iced buckles on black rubberized footwear – that kind´a thing. And so it was that my buds and I were there at the hill on Christmas Day afternoon for a little recreational sliding. The place was alive with kids – maybe 20 or so – many with brand new sleds, and we were having a good time. There had been a few mishaps – fat lips and loose teeth – but no broken bones yet. It was about then that Kim Bird showed up with his family´s brand new Christmas toboggan. We all looked at him like he was crazy, but he said that he knew what he was doing because he and his family went tobogganing all the time. He only had his little brother for a crew and was looking for additional riders. These riders were important because to get to the top of the toboggan run you had to climb the back half of the dune – out of sight and out of view of everyone. It was a long way around and then it was a long and tiring journey upward. It took forever to get up there, and he wanted crew bodies to take turns, helping pull the big piece of wood.

Now Kim was a smooth talker and a year older – one of the cool kids. I stood there looking at the deathtrap as he cajoled, talked, and berated other hesitant kids into going along. But I and I alone from our little group… decided against the trip. Yep, and when Kim laid into me about being chicken, a scared-ee cat and a sissy, I just turned around, grabbed my sled, and started up the hill for another slide. At the top, I watched the last of them disappear around the bend and I kind´a felt bad about being a chicken, scared-ee cat and sissy. But, I´d been on a toboggan, once, and hadn´t liked it one little bit. So, I hit the hill again. As is the nature of a kid, I made new friends and my old ones – out of sight and out of mind – were nary a thought anymore. I went back up and down, probably six more times until it was beginning to get dark. I had to be inside by the time streetlights came on, so, I grabbed the rope handle and began pulling my sled toward home. Over at the foot of the toboggan run, numerous kids were plopped down, re-doing footwear for their walk home, too. It was just about then that we all heard the blood-curdling screams.

We all looked up. In a split second we saw the toboggan racing down the run at Mach Five. It was actually a very pretty winter scene; kids, with their long Dr. Seuss stocking hats and scarves billowing and mittened hands holding tightly onto the toboggan´s handles, had their mouths and eyes stretched wide in glee – no wait… that was terror! And within micro seconds, the toboggan was down and plowing into all those kids trying to scamper away from the run´s bottom! They went flying like bowling pins and the toboggan and its occupants did, too, except for my pal Keith Carter, who impacted with a scampering kid at the base of the run. The derailed and airborne toboggan crashed into a snow bank, right near the swing set, and the riders went sailing every which way.

Yep, and when the accounting was done, there were several missing teeth, a lot of bloody noses and fat lips, a few sprained fingers and the kid – whom I didn´t know – that Keith Carter had plowed into, had a broken arm. So there you go. The one thing I can say – dumb or not – is that I´ve always known a death trap when I see one. And, a good case in point… is the Christmas Day Toboggan Massacre.

Happy Christmas, everybody!