Ice Ice Baby

Out on the ice!

Front row:  Cousins Tommy, Paula and Julie

Second Row:  Sister Kathy and Cousin Fredda

Third Row:  Myself, Cousin Russell and Sister Sharon

Fourth Row:  Sister Vickie and I am not sure can’t see her face.

My Cousins and I spent many winter’s on the lake behind my house, Lake Whitehurst.  Our back yard ran directly into the lake so it was out our back door so to speak.  In the winter, at that time, in Virginia, we always had very snowy winters; if it wasn’t snowing it was still freezing.  Virginia was a very cold geographic area and because it was so cold in winter the lake would freeze often to varying depths multiple times a year. Nearly all of our favorite winter activities involved the lake.

We had some wonderful, frightening and fun times on that frozen lake.  I think our most favorite activity on the ice was sledding. All the cousins, my sisters and I would have contest to see who could slide the farthest across the lake.  Our yard had the perfect slope from the house down to the lake.  We would begin our sledding experience at the back door of our garage, fly across the back yard running as fast as possible throw ourselves on the sled just before hitting the ice and go out onto the ice and across the lake at a pretty high rate of speed laughing and pushing with our hands as hard as we could to get all the distance we could possibly manage out of the run.  The farther we went on the ice however the more silent we would be, we were listening for the dreaded cracking sound.  You would think our fear would  stop us from pushing forward on the ice but it never did, we just listened carefully.  If we heard the ice have that dull deep crack we knew it was cracking deep under the ice and we had to stop then before we got to the thin ice.  Our ride was over.   There was a small island in the middle of the lake inhabited only by ducks, wild geese, snakes, muskrats and turtles.  Our goal in sledding was to make it to the island that we named “Muskrat Island” though I do not know its real name or even if it had one.  Thinking back it was certainly a risky thing to do but we all loved it.  There were people who fell through the ice but thankfully we never had any serious issues and not a one of us children fell through the ice.   We had a few close calls but no serious problems.

We never had any Ice skates, some of the cousins did but we didn’t.  We just “skated” using out shoes.  We had just as much fun.  We would spend the whole day on the ice and half of the night if our parents would let us.  We bundled up and would stay out until forced inside for warm drinks and food.  It was horrible to come inside.  Our hands and feet would begin to thaw and the pain would be horrible.  We would writhe in the floor moaning in pain.  Your hands and feet would burn like they were on fire.  It was so painful.  I can remember sitting and silently crying.  We had to wait until our gloves and socks were warm and our hands and feet were “thawed” before we could go back out.  We would go right back out as soon as they would feel better even if it meant putting socks on our hands instead of gloves because our gloves weren’t dry.  (We didn’t have a dryer part of the time we lived there.  Yes I lived in a time when people did not have dryers!)  We would stay out until we couldn’t take it any longer and go through the same pain sequence again and again but never thought about it not being worth it.

There was one major rule out on the ice.  You had to start out on the ice very far apart from one another.  The ice had to be SUPER thick in order for us to be able to stand near one another and that was not too often.  If you started near someone and you heard the deep crack you quietly backed away.  Sometimes you got to play together sometimes it was a take turn kind of day but any day on the ice was a fun winter day.