By Mike Hill
Snows in the South are always times of delight. Being born during a snowstorm has probably shaped my thinking but I seem to have a disproportionate number of snow memories. I am sure there were snow events before middle school but that’s where my memories begin.
Winters seemed colder when I was young. We had bigger snows and they lasted longer. When I was ten or eleven, we had a snow to bring out the Alpine spirit in Fort Mill. Southerners in the 1950’s did not own sleds. This snow came over an icy base and sledding was at its best. Every possible conveyance was drafted into snow sliding duty. For little kids, dishpans and baking sheets worked well, but for the bigger guys, creativity was the norm. Car trunk lids were a pretty common site and every junkyard within miles must have been ravaged for hoods and trunk lids.
During that heavy snow in the fifties, everyone in town seems to have congregated at the Fort Mill Golf Course. The clubhouse sat at the top of a hill and the fairways sloped away. It was in the same location as the current clubhouse but there was an older wooden clubhouse and only nine holes to play at that time.
In what now seems a great sacrilege, the hills of the Fort Mill Golf Course were put into service as good sledding areas. From the clubhouse, the course is down-hill and I remember a chaotic scene of uncontrolled crashing and joy as we slammed over sand traps and tried to avoid other revelers dragging their transportation of choice back up the hill.
Evidentially this was one of the first of a series of snowy years. By the next snow, everybody had a sled and they came out at the first flake. Many times I saw kids trying to sled on a barely snow-dusted grassy hill.
There was one form of transport that was the gold standard of makeshift sledding mania. The Coca-Cola signs for the outside of buildings were circular with rounded edges. They varied in size from about a foot in diameter to about four feet. When I was in the ninth grade, Rusty Rector, who lived near the golf course, had an inside contact. His father was a truck driver for the Rock Hill Coca-Cola Company and produced one of the big signs. We tied rope through the mounting holes in the sign and dragged it all over the course until we found the perfect stage.
Hole number twelve…longest, meanest hole on the new back nine, was a narrow passage between high banks on each side. The banks rose thirty-plus feet on either side of this “Valley of Golf Death.” The sides were so steep that any golf ball hit on the bank was likely to roll down to the center of the valley.
Two or three of us would load aboard the sign at the top the highest ridge and launch ourselves down into the valley. The sign, because it was circular, was good to go in any direction and had a tendency to spin while it did. It would gain speed and when it reached the bottom would climb the ridge on the other side often bumping trees at the top before we flew again. We could ride back and forth down the valley spinning at breakneck speeds until we got close to the pond where we would bail out and hold the rope to keep the sign from reaching the treacherously frozen water. There was no cushioning in these signs and the inside rim was raw metal. It was a time for character building. Dust off the snow and carry on.
The Fort Mill Golf Course, after surveying the damage to its fairways after the snow melted, made the wise decision to make sledding on the course taboo.
Without the hills of the golf course, local daredevils identified the best streets in town for sledding. Fort Mill was still a sleepy little town and traffic was not the danger it is now.
There was another series of snowy years when I was in my twenties, married and before Kate was born. We lived in the Whiteville Park section of town. When it snowed, we found that Lockman Street was the best sledding hill in town. The residents of the street would leave their cars at the top of the hill and the street would be blocked off. A good push and savvy riders could ride down to the bottom and up the hill almost to the stop sign where Case had his first accident. (I will either explain that later or let my wayward son talk his way out of that one.)
When snow was on the way, the good people of Lockman Street would create a layer of ice by hosing down the street. Lockman Street was not just for kids. While there were plenty, sometimes four deep on a sled, neighborhood adults would congregate and relive their own childhood albeit with reminiscences fueled by cups of bourbon. Bob Hill, Billy Barron, Steve McCrae, and Bob Martin were among the guys. The wives usually were smart enough to go into someone’s house and socialize.
Dad, like the other grown-ups, was available to give the sleds a good shove down the hill but on one attempt, his feet went out from under him and he fell backward hitting his head on the icy street. Thankfully, our family Doctor, Bob Martin was one of the revelers and he and several others managed to get Dad into Steve McCrae’s house and on the couch. Dad was okay but Mother had to stay up and keep him awake for several hours until she was sure there was no concussion.
Steve and Miriam McCrae were always ready for a party but I am sure they were less than thrilled to have my 240 pound semi-delirious snow-soaked father dumped on their living room couch. Dr. Martin had him stay on the couch long enough to rule out a serious concussion and Mom was told to keep an eye on him for a couple of hours. Things worked out. That evening was the beginning of a long deep relationship between the McCrae and Hill families. The McCraes would often travel with Dad and Mom as they motor-homed across the United States.
Bob Hill loved snow. I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t get a phone call as the first flakes fell. “Do you see the snow?” he would ask. Big Bob was at high pitch during the few substantial snows we got here. Once his exuberance got a little ahead of his judgement. A rare eight-inch snow covered the yard on Fairway Drive and the nearby golf course was a beautiful carpet of white. All three of his grandchildren were under five at the time and Kate, Robbs and Case were at Dad’s house all bundled up to throw snowballs and build snowmen.
The garage door opened without warning and out came Bob on the golf cart. It was a basic cart with one bench seat and a rack for golf clubs. Despite the size limitations for a two-hundred-forty-pound grandfather and three grandchildren, Dad piled everybody aboard and off they went to ride the golf course. They had just gone over the horizon in a golf cart full of giggles when back Dad came red faced with all the kids crying. Big Bob had made a sharp turn and all three kids tumbled out onto the snow. To make it worse, he had run over Case’s leg. Mama Dot, Connie, and Jane rushed out to do triage but found that none of the children were harmed. Even Case’s leg was cushioned by the snow and unhurt although Case regularly reminded Dad of the golf cart tragedy. “Get out the golf cart!” became the battle cry with every snow. Bob would always hang his head in mock shame.
Even today, when the first few flakes begin to dot the ground, I wait for the phone call I wish would come.
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