My mother always said I was an accident looking for a place to happen and I’d be lucky to survive to see age 20. She wasn’t wrong, because I was very lucky on many occasions.
Change that photo and your story into 3 photos showing the evolution of fun. Well, make it 4 to include the results of having too much redneck fun.
I found a hood from an old abandoned Buick on our farm that had a very pronounced hump. One look, and I immediately thought that if nverted it made a great flat bottom sled/toboggan with something of a keel with the ridge down the middle. We didn’t get snow often nor very much when we did, but that year was one of the heaviest with about 10 inches. Sliding around on it still required a fairly large surface area to have any fun without destroying the property or making a mess of the dirt road we lived on.
Picture and Day #1:
I tied a rope to the hood so I could drag it up the biggest hill (about a quarter mile) in one of the pastures and then jump on and ride back down. It probably hit 5-10 mph, and was good fun if not a bit tiring. My sister wanted to try it and promptly hit a small tree, which launched the hood and her on it. All landed safely, so the tree became part of the course, but I was getting really tired of dragging it up the hill, even with my sister’s help.
Picture and Day #2:
We had a quarter horse mare for plowing, and by that age, I already knew how, so I put the plow rig on her and borrowed a single tree to connect the hood with a sturdier rope to drag the hood up the hill with me riding it. She would come back down the hill to me because I showed her that I had sweet feed on the hood with me. We were close to the house, so she didn’t get too grumpy and was good help, for a while. I also used the horse drawn hood to feed the cows over the next few days so everybody was still cool about my somewhat dangerous new toy
Picture and Day #3.
Most of the snow was melting and refreezing so there was a sheet of ice about 3 inches thick on everything with about 3 inches of mud under the ice because the ground never got cold enough to freeze. Pop (stepfather’s dad) said he was worried the mare would slip and get hurt, so I put a larger and longer rope on the hood and tied it behind Pop’s old CJ5 jeep. My sister was 16 and (not that it really mattered) had her license, so got volunteered to drive the jeep with me riding the hood. We probably hit 30 mph or so on the flat straights in the open pasture, and then figured out that the hood would nearly catch (and pass) the jeep in a sharp turn. Our stepdad was watching what his dad let us get up to and then he got involved. Before long, we had every friend we knew within 10 miles taking a turn on the hood as our stepdad would drive toward a shallow pond and then cut hard to slingshot the hood out across 50-60 feet of bone chilling water. He had a much newer and more powerful CJ5 with bigger tires, so had much better traction than Pop’s. The hood would hit the water and bounce like a skier jumping on a wakeboard at very dangerous and unknown speeds. Great fun when he would turn in the open field and the hood would nearly pass the jeep and get slack in the rope, and then take off violently when the slack was taken up again. We had no clue how dangerous this was getting. Never mind the amount of cow poop and mud we were getting slung on us by the jeep.
Picture and Day #4:
It’s always fun until someone gets hurt. Stepdad is getting bolder and more aggressive with his driving skills near the ponds. The hood came off the pond and found a willow stump at the bank (with me being the lucky rider at the time) and launched me nearly 20 feet into the air at the mercy of the first several laws of physics. I came back down in a horrific roll and saw the car hood go over my head because we were both still traveling in the same straight line awaiting outside forces to change our direction. Fortunately, the rope tightened taking hood away from me and nothing was broken, but I sprained nearly every joint in both arms and legs. It was a very violent landing. And it was also the final human ride on the car hood, because my mother happened to be in the jeep when it happened. She’d already seen me go under her original solar powered clothes dryer (clothes line) on a bike (with my brother chasing me) and had visions of someone getting decapitated or maimed if the fun continued.
Kids today don’t know what good fun is.
