Life's Outtakes: A fast sled

I had nine brothers and sisters, and there wasn’t much money for new things. Living on a farm with that many siblings meant we found ways of having fun that didn’t cost a lot. One was with an old commercial chicken building on our farm that had a low ground floor and a steep roof. The snow in the winter was always high enough that it packed up to the roof. The snow also covered the roof. This created a perfect sledding slope.

We didn’t have money for sleds, but that didn’t stop us. We found that the scoop shovels that we used to shovel grain would work. These were plentiful on our farm. We would sit on the shovel with the handle to the front. We would put our feet out front along the handle, or if we were good at balancing, we could put our feet up on the handle and lean back. I started sledding down this roof by the time I was five years old.