Winter fun – right in your neighborhood !

Posted by Wayne G. Barber

I got my first taste of winter fun in the 1950s  I still have that sled today.  It gave us some fresh air and socialization. Mapleville did not have a lot of street traffic back then and apparently the roads remained snow covered longer than they do today. My parents stored the sled in the garage after I outgrew it and after 60 years of looking at it, I decided to use it but in a totally different way. Country Folk Art. When I was old enough to venture outdoors on my own I was fortunate to have an abundance of places for winter fun. There was a lot of open land in Burrillville back in the 1950s. By then I was old enough to be outside with my friends. This meant numerous opportunities for year round outdoor fun. Kids were outside 12 months of the year. When it was cold out you dressed for the weather and headed outside to play with your friends. Over the past 60 years, I have seen my personal “playgrounds” disappear as streets were added and houses were built in the neighborhood. I remember sliding down hills that now serve as my neighbors’ backyards. There were all sorts of ways to navigate those hills. The first method used by everyone was a Flexible Flyer sled. They were made of wood with metal runners and were equipped with a steering bar. Mine had a rope to pull it. I remember being dressed in so many layers of clothes that I waddled over to the hill dragging my sled behind me. Some kids sat on the sleds but most of us “belly-flopped” onto them with excess clothing as our padding and down the hill we went. Some of the hills were several hundred feet long. We got our exercise pulling the sleds up the hill so we could zip down them once again. Round silver colored “coasters”, made of metal, were also popular. You sat on them and put your hands through two loops. There was no method for steering them other than leaning your body in a certain direction. We loved it when the hills got icy making it really fast for both the sleds and coaster's. I had one method of going down hills that no other kid had. My brother George had a old car for parts and my brother Paul and I took off the hood and flipped it up side down and went down Cooper Hill Road and had no way to stop it. It was made of thick steel and we waxed it to make it faster.  You held on for dear life as you whipped down the public town road. All the kids wanted to take a turn and I had many requests to bring it along when the neighborhood gang got together. We went down at 30 miles per hour and with the  roads being so ice packed because most cars used tire chains met no traffic and flew over the Mapleville bridge and came to rest at Carriere's Variety store by mowing down his front posts and heard him yell, those darn Barbers boys are at it again. Just a few bruises and then Leo Carrierre burst into laughter when his own son Andre was next in line for a thrilling sled ride.When we needed a change of pace from sledding, we could ice skate without leaving our neighborhood. Just down the street from my home was the Ice House pond .Trouts ,Gillerans. What more could a kid ask for? Sometimes we just wanted to make our own fun. So we cleared off places where excess water had formed small ponds. These provided additional skating rinks. They were far from smooth but provided what we thought of as a secret place to meet. We cleared them with our parents’ shovels and brooms and got some exercise that didn’t seem like work at all.  In the summer it was a place to catch frogs and salamanders and in the winter it was where area kids met to skate. I am sure that other locations in Burrillville had their own versions of natural made neighborhood skating rinks. The ones in my neighborhood are now part of someone’s back yard. Apparently, the water issues were resolved so houses could be built. As I look around on my neighborhood walks, I still remember the places we went sledding and skating. They may be gone now but the memories remain. Once in a while we wanted to have some fun outside of our own neighborhood. On weekends we would build a fire on the ice to keep warm and to cook .Ice Fishing was added later.If you wanted to meet your school friends for public skating, the popular spot was the Levy Rink in Harrisville for my sons which was built a lot later.Memories from my days in those places are a story in themselves. Looking back at them will provide future reminiscing. -