Opinion & Comment

Who needs Winter Olympics? Appalachians invented 'hood sledding'

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

Unlike many people, I don’t watch much commercial television. Therefore, no reason exists for me to have a satellite TV subscription, and I live too far out in sparsely-populated hill country for cable to reach.

My old TV antenna sifts six UHF signals from the ether. Two of the channels are fairly clear; the others often appear fuzzy, and the audio sounds scratchy. All of the signals are free for the taking, however.

The sharpest broadcast comes from a NBC affiliate that recently provided wall-to-wall coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin, Italy. One night, a case of insomnia, aggravated by a severe head cold, resulted in me staying up to watch way more athletic contests involving ice and snow than I had ever thought possible.

Nothing much piqued my interest, not even the pretty ice-skating ballerinas, until an event called the “Luge.” This high-speed sledding contest reminded me of a type of Appalachian winter recreation we enjoyed in the mountains, back when nobody could afford store-bought Flexible Flyers and snowboards.

We called it “hood sledding,” a sport made possible by major American auto manufacturers’ penchant for designing wide, flat sheet metal engine compartment covers in the 1950s and 1960s.

No junk yard was safe after six inches of snow fell, followed by coating of ice to make road surfaces and hillsides hard and slick. This was when kids and adults from the hills and hollows removed the hoods from wrecked cars and trucks, searched for log chains or clothes line ropes, and cranked up their McCormick Super C or John Deere tractors.

Hood sledding, of course, is the use of car or truck hoods, turned upside-down, as snow sleighs. Pulled by tractors (all-terrain vehicles having not been invented in the mid-20th Century), old hoods made great bobsleds that could hold adults and children alike.

For example, the inverted hood of a wrecked 1955 Buick Roadmaster was capable of containing two adults and three children. Dragged behind a 1953 Model D two-cylinder John Deere tractor (42 horsepower engine), such a hood sled could easily attain speeds of 10-15 mph when my Grandpa Mack shifted into high gear.

The goal of hood sledding was not to be pulled, but – similar to the engineering dynamics on which the Olympic Luge event is based – to use gravity and momentum to whiplash around the putt-putting old farm tractor and go skimming off the lip of a hill. If the hill was steep and the snow packed hard, a hood sled could clock 35 mph on a quarter-mile slide.

Hood sledding was quite exciting. It involved attaining high speeds without the benefit of a mechanical steering or braking system. In order to stop a hood sled, the passengers all scooted forward to cause the front of the hood to dig in, like a giant snow shovel. To increase speed, everyone scooted backward to cause a snow-plane effect.

Hood sledding was usually an activity done on a clear, cold night, preferably under a full moon. Members of the community, carrying picnic baskets and thermos containers, gathered at the top of the best hill, where we divided up by church affiliation to race.

The Methodists, my family’s group, tended toward Buick and Pontiac hoods pulled by John Deere two-bangers. The Southern Baptists were strictly Ford folks, a wrecked Crown Victoria furnishing the preferred hood. Their method of locomotion ranged from Farm-Alls to Oliver tractors.

The non-denominational Holy Ghost Lighthouse Outreach Center in Christ, its members forsaking ornamentation of any type, painted the chrome on their cars and trucks black, and they solemnly sledded down the hill in an old hearse hood donated by the local funeral parlor.

The racing aspect of hood sledding was mainly speed for the sake of excitement. What we competed for was distance records, not that anyone would ever remember that First Methodist Church edged out a win in 1958’s hood-sledding event after what appeared to be a tie with the Baptists.

The winning margin was victory was three inches, measured from Chief Pontiac’s chrome head dress to his shoulders on the hood ornament of the Methodists’ racing sleigh.