Mandy Newham-Cobb illustration
Freezer Burn
The icicles hanging along the porch roof looked like stalactites we had seen when we visited Cudjo Cavern, outside Middlesboro. It was cold and the morning sun was as bright as July at Myrtle Beach. We took in huge breaths that froze our nose hairs and burned our lungs.
It hadn’t been much of a snow by 1958 East Tennessee standards, but it had come down in huge, pillow-fight flakes, and the temperature had dropped into the teens overnight and turned it into what every kid with a sled prays for: frozen snow. These perfect conditions only occurred a couple of times in an adolescent’s life.
It was slow-going climbing the good half-mile from the very bottom of the hill next to the drainage ditch up to the crest at the north entrance of our neighborhood. My brother, Eddie, and I picked up eager recruits at back doors along our trek. By the time we had gained the summit, a dozen kids tagged along.
My brother—being the senior sledder—plopped down his sled for the first run. Eleven hands went into the air as he studied each face to determine who would have the honor of flying co-pilot with him. I glared into his eyes and sent telepathic reminders that I hadn’t ratted him out for coming in late from his date the Friday night before. He reluctantly gave me the nod.
He eased onto his knees there on that Flexible Flyer and dropped onto his stomach. Taking one end of the wooden steering bar in each mittened hand, he gave the mechanism a couple of test wiggles, then turned his head slightly and indicated that I should climb aboard. I gently lowered my skinny torso onto his back and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. Lifting my feet, Gary McIntyre grasped the soles of my galoshes and leaned into it. The only sound was the shush of the paraffined runners kissing the great white way before us.
We jogged along, just barely able to maintain headway for about 30 or 40 feet. Then, breaking over the crest of the hill, we began to pick up speed at a rather alarming rate. The runners breathed along as we reached the turn onto Gilbert Street. Eddie dug the toe of his left boot into the snow and shouted, “LEAN!!!” I tightened my grip and we somehow made the turn, my teeth clattering a drum solo in my head.
There the thoroughfare had been packed hard as a hockey rink and we did the two-block length of the road in something under seven seconds. We were experiencing the East Tennessee winter equivalent of the Bonneville Salt Flats. I could feel my ears filling with frozen tears and could only see a blur of bouncing light through the slits that were my eyelids. My cheeks felt as if someone had dipped them into a fish fryer and then rubbed them with 80-grit sandpaper. It was pure ecstasy.
There could be no turning at that speed so, at the bottom of the street, we did the only thing there was to do: flew straight into the Reaneau’s backyard. We crossed their front yard in 0.4 seconds, over the road, between a mailbox and a boxwood, and into our yard.
Then the big drop in our backyard was on us in a flash, and, suddenly, we were enveloped in a somewhat supernatural silence as we left terra firma. Eddie and I hadn’t slowed in the least and found ourselves quite some distance above the tundra. A Desoto passed underneath us. I heard Elvis singing “White Christmas.” All of it. Either time stopped or we actually stayed airborne for five and a half minutes.
Suddenly the breath was knocked out of my body as we reconnected with Mother Earth. A sound emitted from Eddie that was a perfect imitation of a Model T’s horn. The sled runners collapsed as flat as a coat hanger as the nose of the sled pierced the crusted snow and dug into the frozen ground below. I heard wood splinter and metal squeal as the wreckage stopped in a split second.
A total of seventeen stitches, two chipped teeth, one broken pair of glasses, and three cracked ribs later, my brother Eddie and I became the subjects of a sledding tale that would be told in our hometown for many a winter to come.
It was worth every scab and scar.
About the author: Michael Reno Harrell is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller in Burke County, North Carolina.