"On Frozen Pond"

My brother Ralph and I - "On Frozen Pond"

In 1981, a film debuted starring Katherine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda. It won a Golden Globe Award, an Academy Award and was nominated for eight Oscars. The film was Henry Fonda's final film and was titled "On Golden Pond". Having never seen the film (and probably not likely to), I cannot give it a rating or attest to its quality.

This little yarn however, is not about a big screen movie with over-paid actors.  It's about two brothers on an Ozark hill farm, that spent a winter's afternoon playing and sliding...

"On Frozen Pond"

We moved from the farmhouse at County Line to the Conklin House at Junction Hill in the late fall of 1968. It was a ranch style house with a garage, a single level barn, a chicken house and an outdoor johnny. (which was only used when you couldn't make it to the house!) There was a fenced in "play yard", a large garden spot (complete with rocks), a six-acre pasture, a couple of stands of timber...

And there was a pond.

How do you describe an Ozark farm pond? And really catch the ugliness? the smallness? the mudiness? the unsanitariness? And winsomeness and charm of a place a young lad can wile away the hours, in any season of the year?

Our pond was in the hollow, down the steep hill below the chicken house. The dirt had been dug out down to red clay mud and then piled across the hollow to form a dam for the water. After a few rains, (if it was gonna "hold" water) a small, shallow pool of dirty clay-colored water would form in the pond.

If the pond would continue to "hold", it would get larger and deeper, the mud would settle and the water would get clearer. Somehow, fish would begin to grow in the pond, in addition to frogs, turtles, snakes and other charming creatures.

In the winter time (at least the winters before Al Gore invented Global Warming) the pond would freeze over at least once during the season. This would happen after a few days of below-freezing weather and usually some snowfall. But even after you KNEW that the pond was frozen enough to slide on, you didn't dare get out on it!

There was a ritual to testing the ice for "slideability."

After we had tested the edges of the ice for thickness by stomping, and sliding a little around the edges; we had to get Dad's stamp of approval. Dad didn't take to well to pestering and whining so just had to ask once... and then remind him every thirty minutes or so!

Dad would eventually make the trek down the hill to "check out" the ice.He would stand on the edge of the ice and stomp... and then listen. He would walk out on the ice and listen to the popping and cracking the ice made under his weight. After a few minutes of this, he would deem the ice thick enough (or not thick enough.) I really haven't figured out his method of testing but we never ended up in the drink!

Since we didn't have skates, my brother Ralph and I did the next best thing.

By trial and error, we had found out which pair of our shoes were the best for sliding on snow and ice. They had to be slick enough to slide smoothly over the somewhat rough, snow-covered pond ice. But not so infernally slick that you couldn't even stand up in'um! - Somewhere between leather soled dress shoes and Converse tenner-shoes.

And we slid... We raced each other. We chased each other. We had contests to see who could slide the farthest and fastest. We tried to turn in circles while sliding. We tried turning mid-slide and sliding backward. It was a glorious hour or so of cold, icy, improvised fun!

Eventually though, our hands got cold, our ears were froze, our clothes were wet and cold; so we headed up the hill to the house.

I feel somewhat sorry for the kids of today. With all the video games, online-gaming sites, cellphone apps and the other knick-knacks that modern technology has provided to them; I hardly think they size up to a wintry afternoon spent "On Frozen Pond".