TRUE DAKOTAN PHOTO/DUKE THE SLEDDING HILL in the city park got a good workout over the holidays. Both local kids and adults as well as those from all over the country home for the holidays enjoyed the hill’s thrilling decline.

Sledding on “the hill”

I was taking Matt’s Labradors for a pickup ride through the Springs city park when I noticed parents standing at the bottom of “the hill”, watching their chrildren come barreling headlong down the slope that has thrilled kids for generations.

“I don’t recall my parents, Don and Mary Wenzel, standing at the bottom of the hill (unless I was in trouble for something back home). As a matter of fact, I don’t remember Harold and Pat VanBockern, Leonard and Margaret Haddorff, Lawrence and Vera Myers, Lilian and Raymond Whitlock or Bud Pederson, Leroy and Delayne Kuestermeyer, Buck and Dee Lewis, or Tillie and Lewis Tofflemire waiting at the bottom of the hill with a nice warm automobile.

What happened since those days in the 1950s when nearly every kid in town just walked to “the hill”, dragging a runner sled with a strand of rope? Filled with mom’s Saturday dinner and a good old pair of rubber overshoes, we would head for the hill on particularly snowy days for as much fun as we could muster up until, wet and cold, we’d take one last run before heading for home.

Today’s version is probably better, of course. Somebody’s got to be in charge so there aren’t any serious injuries as the town’s youngster come blazing down that hill. I just don’t remember parents waiting at the bottom of the hill in “our day”.

I asked Royce Van Bockern about that the other day… we went through a bunch of school classes together and share a lot of the same memories of growing up in Wessington Springs.

“Why don’t I remember OUR PARENTS waiting at the bottom of “the hill” when we were kids… am I slipping?” I asked Royced at the Humm Dinger the other day.

“He didn’t address the “am I slipping” part… or at least I don’t remember that he did. But he had a poignant vision of why we don’t recall parents at “the hill”… “They weren’t there… they were probably just damned glad to have us out of the house for a little while,” he said.

That’s what I thought.

Craig Wenzel, True Dakotan editor

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