The Green Coat

Four distinct seasons didn’t matter a lot to us when we were kids. We had two cherished seasons – hot season and cold season. The time in between seemed to include a lot of cold rain and waiting.

Hot season was summer, of course, and the ability to run in and out of the house without coats was only improved upon by the fact that there also was no school. Summer was easy.

But once school resumed and Halloween was over, we knew that cold season was fast approaching and that meant snow.  Christmas was still a long way off and Thanksgiving, save for one meal, was really not that satisfying. So, snow was on our minds. Besides, what’s fun about playing on frozen dirt?

At the first dusting of snow, my brothers and I got our sleds ready. We sanded the rust off the runners and nailed down any loose boards. The toboggan was also brought out but since it had seen better days we didn’t use it much. Aluminum saucers were the rage but dented easily and you couldn’t steer them. Plastic sliding devices were not yet prevalent.

Once we had enough snow for sliding we got busy creating the sliding path. Getting it tramped down was a lot of work. No one wanted to be first because you just got stuck. But eventually we got a path that only got better with use. Our back yard was almost all hill leading up to the base of Sorin’s Bluff. To make the path longer and give us a good start, we devised a path that went about 100 feet up into the steep woods.

The ride down was great, especially dodging the clothesline poles near the house. Once beyond that, we went around the side of the house down to the street where we had to stop. One year there was an ice storm that allowed us to continue across the street and down the hill on that side. We never told Mom about that.

We would argue over who owned which sled. The Flexible Flyer was the best so was out of reach for my younger brother Warren and me most of the time until we inherited what was left of it in later years. In the early years we were left with sleds so old they were devoid of any markings. They were also so short your knees would ride on the ground unless you held your legs high, which was tiring.

But then the winter of fourth grade arrived. Each year Mom would see who got hand-me-down winter wear and who got new. Somehow that year I got a brand-new coat. It was not overly warm as I recall. But it was extra long and had a faux leather shell, maybe Naugahyde. It was also green.

What’s so special about a green Naugahyde coat? Plenty, as I discovered one day on my way home from school. Kids were sliding down a back yard from the base of the bluff and it was too far to go home and fetch my sled. So, I did the next best thing – I slid down the hill on my back. I think I discovered this hidden feature in the coat some time earlier after falling and sliding on ice.

This now meant that I had a sled with me (on me) whenever I needed one. And it was fast. So fast that watching the world fly by upside down was a bit unnerving. But I never let on because my friends were jealous.

My greatest accomplishment with the coat came later that winter when I was in a skating race at South Park rink. I had figure skates with toothed tips. I couldn’t skate worth a darn but I could run on those tips and the judges weren’t interested in skating skill. They only wanted to see who crossed the finish line first so they could present awards and go home.

The rink was relatively short and when the whistle blew for my race, I got up on my tips and literally ran on them the whole way. Except that as I was a bit more than half way, a tip caught the ice too soon and I tripped and fell right onto the ice. More specifically, I fell onto my green coat, which glided me across the finish line in first place.

I’m sure a lot of folks got a charge out of that. I know my brother Dave did, who still reminds me of it. I did not cheat. I simply had crossed the finish line ahead of anyone else.

The green coat lasted only that one year. As you might imagine, it took a lot of abuse sliding on paths that included ice chunks and the occasional exposed tree root. My back remembers a few of those. The green shell was also pretty much in tatters, with rips everywhere. I think the zipper broke, too. I never got another coat like it.

I should have had it bronzed.