Long Winter Rides Through the Big Woods

I always looked forward to winter because it meant Christmas was coming, and I couldn’t wait for the snow. The more the better. There was a great mystery about the woods in the winter as the white, white snow and the black, black barren trees created a completely new, clean and pristine world. We were doubly blessed with Ferry’s Woods, which began as a little creek and a little dip in the road starting between Old Man Ferry’s and one of his kid’s houses on 41st Street and ran all the way down to Coaltown Road. Geologically, it gradually widened into a huge and deep ravine that meandered west and then south toward the flat land leading toward the Rock River. It was completely forested with great oak trees, stands of sumac, and many hedgeball thickets, which also acted as natural fences. We approached the woods from the corner of 32nd Avenue and 38th Street where there was a small farm owned by the Frys. (Mom got fresh milk and butter there in the early days.) There was a smaller, muddy ravine at this intersection, which you had to cross before you came to the big woods. You approached the big woods through a small grove of strong smelling Sumac, then crawled through a barbed-wire fence. Fry’s Woods were actually used to pasture a few dairy cows, which I was kind of afraid of—especially the bulls, which were known to charge at people. The well-worn path down the hill was also the main sled run. It was very steep, winding, and long. You had to be experienced to negotiate it without going off the path or smashing into a tree. If Mom had ever had a look at that treacherous route, she would have died on the spot of apoplexy. On our sledding outings, Bob and I shared a new Flexible Flyer sled we had gotten for Christmas one year. But we didn’t take turns on it. Instead, we went down the hill together; either sitting one behind the other and steering with our feet, or the safer way, which was to belly flop, one lying on top of the other and steering with our hands. The steering bar actually flexed the leading edge of the sled’s runners in the direction you wanted to turn—but not much. Steering was more an art of shifting your weight than actually steering. The hill offered a ride several minutes long. But to extend it, we learned to guide our sled onto the frozen creek at the bottom to continue our ride as far down the slick ice as we could, until we got to a small pond where a large log stopped our run. It was such a long walk back to the top of the hill that we never did more than a couple of these long runs. All this in heavy winter Mackinaws, two pairs of pants, earmuffs, mittens, and galoshes. No wonder we were in such good shape. This was hard play. These sledding outings in the “Big Woods” were strictly limited to Bobby and me. Too dangerous for girls! For them, we had another, safer ravine. Being a river valley, there’s nothing but little ravines running everywhere throughout Moline. This one was about a block down 39th Street, just behind the Vergain’s 38th Street house but on the 39th street side. It was a great place and was always filled with lots of other kids at the first heavy snow. The sledding runs were on both sides of the little ravine, which was safely free of trees. You slid down either hill in half a minute and climbed back up in five. The really poor kids slid down the hill on their butts or on a piece of cardboard or begged rides. Some daredevils would climb into a cardboard box and someone else would just push them off. They twirled down the short but steep hill and usually ended up spilling out when the box went out of control or fell apart completely as it got wetter and wetter. Some kids tried skiing, but the hill was really too short and climbing back up meant removing the skis. The most fun we had on this hill was with our homemade toboggan. Daddy had liberated an old Shell sign from its gas station. It was one half of a three-dimensional, metal, scallop-shaped shell about three and a half feet wide and about a foot deep. Daddy hooked a pulling rope to it for us. We could comfortably fit three people into it. It had very sharp edges. I remember that. This vehicle was never “Mother Approved,” believe me. It was a wild ride! It was sort of round, so it would spin all the way down the hill. And, loaded with three or more kids, it was really heavy, so it went extremely fast. We just had to watch out for other kids, especially those coming toward us down the opposite hill onto the flat area between the two hills. In this free ride area, you had to negotiate all the other kids and the patches of dead Milkweed plants. (The kind that spilled their gossamer parachutes as they dried. We would open the pods and blow their contents into each other’s face the same as we did with dried dandelions in the summer.) There were so many kids at this hill, that the snow would too soon get worn away, leaving only dead grass and dirt in its place. I can vividly remember my happiness trudging home from these outings, freezing cold, wet, chaffed ankles and wrists, and deliriously tired. WERE WE POOR?