October 22, 2012--Midcoast: With Rod

Former teacher, former principal, retired school superintendent, and good friend Rod Swank's stories always include lessons.

We were visiting with him recently, and with cold weather approaching here in Maine, I asked him if where he lived in Ohio there was a lot of snow.

"Yes, lots," he said, gesturing with his hand to show me how much. "Right here up to our chests."

"And it was cold?"

"That's what they tell me, but when I was a young man I had so much blood flowing in my veins I hardly noticed."

"I'll bet everyone stayed indoors during the coldest and darkest times."

"I don't know about everyone," he smiled, looking back on those days, "but I spent a lot of time outdoors. You see, I had a five-man bobsled and . . ."

"You had a what?" Rona, wide-eyed and skeptical, asked.

"Yes ma'am, I sure did. I looked for four other fellows so we could really race down that hill.  The one in Butler, which has a double-dip. You'd come down the slope and go over the first one, which was fun enough, but then there was a second one even steeper so that when you went over it you were . . . what am I trying to say?" he asked his daughter Constance.

"You went airborne."

"That's it--airborne," he recalled wistfully, "That was something else."

"How did you come by a five-man sled?" Rona asked, still wondering about that. "Back in Brooklyn where I grew up at most two people could fit on the sleds we had."

"Well, I got mine from my parents who I think might have gotten it from their parents. Isn't that something?"

"Indeed it is," I said. "I grew up in Brooklyn too and there wasn't anything like that passed along from parents to children much less from grandparents."

"That's too bad," Rod said, "It was good to grew up with so much family history. That's the way life was in the middle of Ohio."

Rona and I exchanged glances as if to acknowledge what we had missed growing up in first-generation American families.

"As I told you, I looked for four other fellows to sled with me. I always picked the four biggest ones. I myself wasn't that big but I was in front and steered us along the best path and they provided the weight we needed to be the fastest on the hill."

"You mean you were racing?" Rona asked.

"That's right. There was a nine-man sled that someone had."

"You're kidding," Rona said.

"No, it's true. It was a homemade job. Not like the one I had."

"And you raced against it?"

Rod smiled.

"And you had a chance to beat them?"

Rod continued to smile slyly.

"You're not telling the truth," Rona persisted affectionately.

"I told you, didn't I, that I chose the other fellows carefully. I always looked for the heaviest ones. To give us a better chance. And I also told you I knew my way down that hill.  So I did the steering."

"And?"

"And," he grinned, "most times we won."

"So, the lesson is . . ." I asked.

"Pick you teammates carefully and make sure you know the best path to follow."

"That sounds right," I said.

"And  one more thing," Rod added.

"Yes?"

"At times some of the young girls from the town came out to the hill. Often all dressed up in silk stocking and long skirts."

"And?"

"And they'd ask me if they could take a run with me."

"That was OK?" Rona wondered.

Rod again smiled broadly, "It worked out just fine."

"I bet it did," I said, winking at him.

"Remember I was the fastest," he clearly liked recalling that. "So they'd get on behind me and down the hill we'd go. Not as fast as with those big fellows, you know, but fast enough. And with me steering somehow we always seemed to tumble over at the bottom of the hill. We'd be rolling around in the snow together and . . ."

"And I think I know," Rona interrupted, "what lesson to take from that."

Rod didn't need to say much more. All of us joined him in happy laughter.

"But you know," Constance said, as we caught our breath, "when in 1996 we returned to Ohio to bury his mother's ashes, my father led our little caravan of cars from the family cemetery in North Liberty back to Butler where they had lived when he was a boy. When we got there he stopped at the top of that  hill and at first we wondered why. He got out of the car and stood there for a moment as if looking back in time to a day when the snow wouldn't stop falling. Then we understood. Though he didn't say a word and just stood there, we knew he wanted us to join him on his bobsled--with him of course still steering--and 'ride' that double-dip together."