As kids growing up on the Saskatchewan prairies in the 1960s and 70s, we didn’t have a lot of options to entertain ourselves during the long prairie winters. The television only had a couple channels and there were no electronics to amuse us.
You can only play Trouble, make a Lite-Brite picture, bake a pitiful little cake in an Easy-Bake Oven or burn yourself with a wood burning set so many times before you need to move on.
Yes, the “B” word! Mom got annoyed when we complained we were bored. If we were hanging around the house too much in the winter, we eventually got sent outside to find something to do. By the time our eviction to the great outdoors became necessary, we had usually had a couple of sibling scraps which, I am sure, cemented Mom’s decision to distance herself from us.
I don’t know if it’s climate change or the fact that you probably just remember things from your childhood as being bigger and better than they really were. In my mind, I recall many giant snowbanks. I guess they’re just relative to the physical size that I was at the time. We spent hours sliding off the roof of the icehouse onto an adjoining snowbank and then down to the ground. An icehouse isn’t very big, but it served the purpose as there were no sliding hills nearby.
We would walk down the long lane from the farm and across the grid road. A field with a row of Caragana bushes and maple trees became our playground. This shelter belt provided a spot where the icy prairie winds formed the snow into huge, hard banks that we could walk on. The snow was pristine - untouched by any other humans and we loved it. I recall standing on a snowbank and looking out across the barren landscape that went on as far as the eye could see and feeling carefree.
My dad had a Ski Doo T’NT 440 Everest snowmobile and a homemade sleigh that he pulled behind. The sleigh was mainly used for hauling pails of drinking water from the well, which was located a quarter mile from the house and not accessible by road in the winter. Being resourceful kids, we repurposed the Ski Doo and water sleigh to use for sledding.
One day my brother was towing a girl from a neighbouring farm and myself in the sleigh through a field. The frame of the eight foot by three foot sleigh was made of wood. The bottom was made from a piece of corrugated steel from a grain bin and was curved up in the front end.
We were going at a good clip and the small, hard snow drifts that were scattered across the field made for a rough ride. It was cold and the wind blew loose snow into our faces. The faster we went over the rough terrain the more we fishtailed, making it hard to hang on to the low sides of the sleigh.
I shouted to try and get him to slow down, but the wind and the sound of the motor sent my words tumbling off never to reach my brother’s fur-hat covered ears. I guess when he glanced back, he mistook our looks of sheer terror for joy and thought we wanted more. With one final violent jolt the sleigh tipped onto its side and expelled us into the snow like a couple of rag dolls.
My brother eventually noticed we were gone and circled back to pick us up. I rose up out of the snow like a wild animal. I was so mad at him. He innocently expressed his sorrow for not hearing my pleas and proceeded to ever so slowly pull us back to the farmyard. I think that near death experience was my last ride in the water sleigh. I learned to be wary of who I accepted rides from.
The bonus of all that snow was that when Spring finally appeared the runoff would fill the ditches and sloughs with water. When another cold snap inevitably hit, we could go skating.
My brother and I are twenty months apart in age and our sister is seven years younger. She loved to tag along, and we watched out for her, most of the time. One winter day Mom and Dad were gone to the village for groceries and the three of us were playing outside. My brother casually suggested to our little sister that she should put her tongue on a metal tailgate that was leaning against a building to see what would happen? Of course, she soon became one with the tailgate and mayhem ensued. We wanted to get out of this before our parents got home so I was trying to pull her off the tailgate. Luckily my brother told me to stop and he ran to the house to get a cup of warm water which he proceeded to pour over her tongue, and it came loose. It was a hard day for her, but she never stuck her tongue on another tailgate, so I guess we taught her a valuable lesson.
By the time she was old enough to roam the homestead by herself, the rest of us were grown and living on our own. She cross country skied with a barn cat sitting on her shoulder for company.
As farm kids, we always found ways to use the world around us to entertain ourselves. There was often nothing to do and no other kids to play with. What other choice did we have? I am not saying that all our ideas were brilliant, but we survived.
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©️Copyright 2020 Norma Galambos
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