Opinion & Comment

Sledding & Old Geezers

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

What possessed me to do it, I have no idea.

Had my wife been with me, she possibly could have talked me out of the foolhardy act. Or, her threats might have been enough to bring me to my senses. She probably would have called one of our sons to talk some sense into their Old Man.

But, I was all alone, with time on my hands, six inches of icy snow on the ground, a full moon shining down the steep hillside, and memories of my boyhood bob-sledding days filled me mind.

Those days are 45 years gone, more than 200 pounds past. Lost youth canÕt be reclaimed, but it doesnÕt keep old geezers like me from trying. This explains why mature men continue to do stupid things.

When I later tried to explain the impulse to my wife, she snorted and said, ÒThe Good Lord looks down on children and fools! I donÕt know which of those categories you fall in . . . probably both. I canÕt believe it!Ó

I thought she would understand . . . might at least feel some empathy for her bald-headed, overweight husband who sought to turn back the hands of time by greasing the runners of a Flexible Flyer sled and flinging himself on it at the top of a steep, snow-covered pasture slope.

I thought that the mother of two sons, who she raised to adulthood, would understand that inside every old geezer is a little boy, trying to figure out why his joints ache, why his back creaks, and why he has become lactose intolerant and canÕt consume whole milk, cheese or ice cream any more. Oh, there are various and sundry other ailments and conditions that the boy-inside-the-geezer canÕt understand . . . like why his fingernails grow so fast but his hair is falling out, why he awakens at 3 a.m. and canÕt go back to sleep, why roughage in the diet is important.

But, for one moment during a winter storm this New Year, the little boy in me unzipped the mental and physical shell which trapped him and went on an exhilarating ride of a lifetime. Luckily, the old geezer did not get killed.

It started when I went for a walk in the moonlight, to marvel at the frozen landscape. I scared up a couple of deer, which went huffing away through the brush. Far off, a coyote howled, the notes of its song stretched thin in the icy air. It was then I heard a sound that caused the little boy to wake up in me after four decades. It was the sound of childrenÕs laughter, excited screams, and the hiss of metal sled runners on hard-packed snow.

The neighbor children, kids the next farm over, were sledding down the hill and having a high time. Listening to the joyful noises, I recalled that my sonÕs sled was hanging in the barn, unused for many years. Before the old geezer could put his years of caution to good use, the little boy inside had escaped and greased the sled runners with cooking oil. He dragged the old geezer to the top of the hill behind the farmhouse, where they took a running go and plunged down the slope.

Yes, it was glorious! The old geezer/little boy, all 265 flabby pounds of him, hurtled down the hill, whooping and hollering as the sled picked up speed. The hands of the clock of age spun backwards. The geezer could almost feel hair follicles regenerating; he longed for a glass of cold buttermilk or a hunk of cheese.

Then, he remembered the electric fence and the dead cow.

By this time, it was too late to ask the little boy for advice. The youth had fled back to wherever he came from. However, the old geezer remembered the little boy seemed to agree that, at its apogee, the sled rocket would be on a collision course to impact with either the energized electric fence or the carcass of a cow that the rendering plant was supposed to pick up on Monday. Now, to those of you familiar with rural mortality, dead cows never freeze . . . at least, not until all the bacteria inside have done their natural work. This particular cow was bloated to around the size of a sport utility vehicle. The old geezer could see it looming ahead. He imagined also he could hear the strange biological tinkles and burbles that foretell a gaseous explosion of putrid internal chemical reactions.

The geezer chose to veer and crash through the electric fence. On the far side, his momentum was stopped be a hay bale. He lay there for a moment, covered in snow and straw with an electric fence wire coiled around his leg, until the next alternating cycle. The little boy, had he still been around, would have appreciated the humor as the old geezer danced and slapped at the electric sparks, uttering words that only old men have learned through long years of hard experience. The geezer finally disentangled himself and limped back to the house.

ÒItÕs a wonder you arenÕt dead,Ó snapped my wife when she found out, Òor worse. We might have had to pull you out of a dead cow.Ó

ÒPerhaps,Ó I agreed, Òbut the electric shocks did my arthritis a world of good.Ó