Second Negative

The Igloo sled

I may not have mentioned it before, but I grew up in the country. And by “the country”, I don’t mean the parts of Connecticut where wealthy New Yorkers buy weekend homes. I mean the rolling hills and tree covered plains of Bastrop County, just outside the small town of Elgin and about 25 miles from Austin, Texas.

Growing up in the country allows you a lot of freedom you wouldn’t necessarily have in the city. How so? Well, in my case, nobody lived close enough to see what we were doing, and there was nothing but wide open space and opportunity. My younger brother and I managed to get into our share of trouble together. As a team, I devised the plans, and he was responsible for risk assessment. For example, could a person jump a Big Wheel off the end of the porch at high speed, without being killed?

One summer, we developed what I’ve come to remember as the Igloo Sled. It’s probably not common knowledge, but a decent sized Igloo cooler pulled by a John Deere riding lawnmower can make a world class land sled. I can’t be certain where the idea came from, but at some point I realized that my brother could fit in an old cooler we found in the garage. And naturally, I was interested in finding reasons to drive the “racing mower” my parents had purchased for the humdrum task of mowing the lawn.

We attached a rope to the cooler and tied the other end to the back of the lawnmower. It’s possible that we also ripped the lid off and threw it away, but sometimes you have to destroy your parent’s property in order to innovate. At least that’s my theory. Anyway, my brother wedged himself down into the cooler in a sitting position, with his knees in front of him and grabbed hold of the rope for steering. I started off slow at first and gradually picked up speed through our backyard. I cut a corner around the house too close and almost killed him, but it worked! The Igloo Sled worked! Throwing caution to the wind, we raced alongside the quarter mile driveway leading up to our house. Up and down the hills I drove while my brother used the rope to slide left to right. This went on for some time, and our triumph nearly caused me to miss a glint of light that meant someone was turning into the driveway. Jamming the beast into 4th gear, we raced up to the house, parked the mower and walked away, completely innocent.

Unfortunately it was not the lord of the manor, who might have missed the unusual site of two boys and their homemade land sled. No, it was our sister, a spy who curried favor with the Queen by reporting on our activities. She jumped out of the car and marched towards us as we made our way to the safety of the house. “What were you two pulling with that mower?” she inquired. I took a second to ponder the question, and decided to play it cool.

“What mower?”