As I write this, Halloween is just five days away. As the final note of “Monster Mash” ends that night, the intro to “Jingle Bells” begins.
Not that we haven’t been hearing carols since Labor Day. One that always gets plenty of airtime is “Winter Wonderland.” The song was written in 1934 by lyricist Richard Smith who evidently avoided snow shoveling and didn’t own a vehicle rotting from road salt.

I think if we are going to label a period wonderland, we need to look more closely at 1973-75. Back then, I despised winter less than I do as an adult. Probably because we had access to danger. Danger equals fun and often stitches, but not necessarily in that order.

If I may, let’s look at a typical winter day in 1973.

KING OF THE MOUNTAIN – Howe School on Hampstead Street is where I put in six years perfecting Profound Mediocrity in academics and athletics. For years, the front lobby sported a sculpture of someone of my likeness wearing a dunce cap while striking out at kickball. I had lousy depth perception, kicking at the ball when Gary Townsend was still in mid-windup.

Anyhooo, plows compressed the aftermath of voluminous snowstorms into a mountain range of solid snow where the paved lot met the grass field that hosted those goddamn kickball games. The Howe School Andes were 50 feet wide and 12 feet tall.

Soft, fluffy snow fell only in Andover, so the wet, heavy snow delivered by the latest blizzard formed stiff, steep slopes once the plows did their thing.

Any boy with the DNA of a mountain goat and a desire for bruises and stitches headed for the hills before school and at recess to participate in epic “King of the Mountain” battles. The goal of these skirmishes was to scale these mountains as your classmates’ bodies hurtled past you in every direction.

If you managed to haul yourself to the peak, your next mission was to hurl the acting king off the mountain. Sometimes the exile included a karate chop to the calves; other times you’d sacrifice your own throne time with an off-the-cliff tackle where both combatants landed hard on icy pavement.

Good luck de-throning the likes of Joe Kamal or the late Mike Jozokos. Hard to tell where mountain goat ended and gladiator began, but those two reigned supreme all along the slippery ridge.

Sprained ankles. Twisted knees. Frostbite. Snow and ice inside your soaked socks. The faint admiration of the throng of girls watching from afar. That there was wonderland.

SKATING – Eventually I overcame my fear of falling through the ice – at the rink – and spent more time attempting to skate at the Methuen High’s slick oval. I crashed into ice and other skaters often. Falls happened in a flash. Getting to one’s feet again took an absurd amount of time, even delaying normal ice refreshes.

Patience-depleted Zamboni drivers just drove around me splayed across the blue line. Eventually I discovered that almost-skating could be fun when you remained conscious and upright.

Armed with this new confidence, I grabbed my skates and headed across the street for almost-hockey on the frozen swamp behind Billy Brown’s house. There among the beaver huts and clumps of water weeds were occasional stretches of thin ice eager to collapse and drop us into knee-deep 33-degree water.
Aside of the occasional splash-downs and ice as smooth as oyster shells, we’d enjoy short spurts of gliding, shots-on-net (two snow boots 4 feet apart) and faux brawls. How none of us landed in the NHL is beyond me.
That there was wonderland.
SLEDDING – The lay of the land at our Howe Street homestead featured gentle slopes toward “the swamp” which was a nice term for “leach field.”
Our red, blue and orange heavy plastic “boats” would sail down the back yard and tumble us into muck that I really hope was mud. In any event, the rides were fun, but we needed more thrills and less sewage.

That’s where the Kattar family’s Merrimack Valley Golf Club came in, until occasional injuries, threats of lawsuits and damaged greens put an end to public sledding and snowmobiling.

A mile up the road from our home, the golf club was a sledder’s dream: steep hills, multiple sled pile-ups, brooks to plunge into. An occasional tree. Screams as our bodies left our sleds. It had it all. That there was wonderland.

Meanwhile, over on Methuen’s west side we were sledding on the former Methuen Ski Hill near the entrance to Forest Lake.
Descending the slope on a pair of fiberglass slats seemed like a solid plan for getting crippled. However, zooming down on a sheet of plastic with no visible means of stopping was much safer.

So that’s what we did … at 138 mph or so. We began our descent in Methuen and came to a rest somewhere in downtown Pelham.
Our frostbitten faces offered just enough flex for ear-to-ear grins. That there was wonderland.

This winter, get yourself some memory-making wonderland.