Down Memory Lane

I did something this weekend I rarely do....and had a great time.  I spent the weekend with several friends and we went out as a group Saturday night & listened to good music, played pool, showed off on the dance floor, swapped stories and had a great time. 

Like many of you, with the combination of work, kids and other obligations in life, I go out like that maybe twice a year at most and we had a lot of fun.

Now as I am back to work on this cool, rainy Monday I have thoughts of winter on my mind and the crazy things we used to do for entertainment during those (seemingly) endless winters.


Image Courtesy of Dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 Long ago when my sister and I were young, my dad had 25 acres of flat land pasture and we would saddle a horse, fire up a tractor, or any available 4WD truck we could find and pull a little red wagon through the snow just as fast as we could go.  The neighbor kids loved to come to our house through the winter in hopes of a ride.  Often times the little red wagon, I think we had one of those Radio Flyers, was in such a state of disrepair that we had to do some rebuilding after every high speed run.

We had a lariat rope and would loop it through the handle and then either take a dally (loop around the saddle horn) if we had a horse or tie it to the bumper of a vehicle and everyone would take turns piling in for a ride, usually 2 - 3 at a time.

If you timed it just right, and put the bigger kids in back, that little red wagon would stand up on the rear wheels with a fast start.  If that didn't dump everyone then a carefully executed series of high speed turns often would do the trick.  Just like a skier behind a boat, the wagon would pick up blinding speed in the turns and come very close to passing the horse or truck.  There were rollovers and crashes and when you hit a bump just right, you would fly through the air before coming back to earth with a thud.

There were bent and broken axles, busted wheels, bent handles and who knows what else that were fixed all winter long on that wagon.  Luckily my dad could repair anything and he would take it over to the shop and hammer out the dents, weld the broken axles and pronounce it road worthy again.

I don't recall any broken bones from those high speed adventures, which is a wonder in itself, but there was a TON of good times had by all.  My dad was often the high speed motivation riding the horse or driving the truck that made endless circles through the pasture.

I don't know what happened to that Radio Flyer from all those years ago and if there were any pictures they were few and far between but I would give a princely sum to have either one today....