The following essay serves as the fifth chapter of One Grew Up in the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Winter recollections from my early years until my teen years on the grounds of Danvers State Hospital and Medfield State Hospital. It was never too cold to play out doors!
The Ice Rink at the Bottom of the Hill
Recollected and Written
by
Mark R Ellsworth
Danvers State Hospital had the hill. Medfield State Hospital had the hills. Smaller than the hill at Danvers, Medfield’s hills were formidable to us young professional tobogganers! At the age of eight we were well practiced in proper weight distribution needed for a survivable toboggan run.
One of the games my family played regularly was Scrabble. A mental toning exercise for Scrabble was what we called the Dictionary Game. The goal of that game was to hold the dictionary in your hands for a long time. As the holder of the dictionary you read a definition of a word that the other players had to guess. But the holder always read the most obscure definition first, moving up the list of definitions. If nobody guessed the word another word was read. During the course of one of the Dictionary Games, with my father enjoying the fact that his words chosen were not being guessed, I learned the following; the name toboggan is a derivative of Native Americans’ sled of choice. Their sled was called odabagan! Their favorite sled used on their reservation was our favorite sled we were using on the State’s reservations. Ironic? Not really but as I reread my decade’s old notes it seemed to be a wow moment for me as a youngster!
Successful sledding journeys on our toboggans required proper weight distribution as three to five of us legged-locked the rider in front and settled down on the odabagenon. As we all know the respective growth rates and sizes are wildly different between kids of those ages. Some of us were small and others were large. The hill at Danvers State Hospital was remarkable for its pitch, breath, and length. Speed, always the goal, could only be attained with each rider sitting in a heavy to lighter sequence. Heavier at the front, lightest at the back end of the toboggan. If this rule was followed it insured that a run down the hill would be without a helicopter spin-out, most of the time. I was young enough while living on the grounds at Danvers State Hospital to be dependent on my older neighbors. They led my apprenticeship in sledding. I became aware of snow conditions, packing the runs, building banks and jumps on the runs, waxing the wooden toboggans, the leg-lock and proper hand positions as I sat on the sled. I also learned to scream as I rocketed down that hill with U.S. Route1 on my right, the gothic Kirkbridge structure looming behind me, and Putnam Pantry Candies located to our right at the bottom of that hill. ( I have to note here that my grandmother, Drannay, had what I thought was the best job in the world selling chocolate treats at Putnam Pantry Candies on Route1 in Danvers!) Sledding on the Danver’s hill was all about the speed! A few years later, Medfield’s hills not only featured speed but also intoduced the airborne element and the art of stopping!
As a preteen I noticed a change in sledding and the materials being used to mass produce sled like objects. For a few years we had been introduced to more plastic saucers, light metal saucers, and large inner tubes as vehicles for our regular winter thrills. The 1967 movie, The Graduate announced the future in one word, plastic! We already knew that and by then we were moving onto our love affair with cars! We did notice that four or five person toboggans were not seen as often on the hills at Medfield.
The sledding slopes at Medfield State Hospital were varied. You could choose a steep dive off a small tree eye poking bank or the large terraced slope located at the back of the chicken barn, appropriately called Sledding Hill. That hill ended on a farm road near the rail line before it crossed Route 27. They were fun but my favorite was the hill located directly behind the Clark Building. This hill’s slope enabled our toboggan to gain speed. That speed required a sudden stop. The need for speed followed by the need to suddenly brake was excitingly dangerous! However ungainly the sled’s abrupt stop was, it happened just before the large brick building could put a wreck and a wrench to a neck. At that critical moment we were propelled into the air as we shot up over the plowed snow bank. Once airborne, we all bailed and hoped for a somewhat soft landing on the opposite snowbank located about five to six feet from the Clark Building’s brick wall.
Patients, always visible behind many windows, watched our hectic downhill trips and cheered us on. Other patients who had ground privileges stood on the hill’s sidewalk applauding our crazy acrobatics. Their attention and their cheers helped sooth the bruises and soreness of those of us who did not end a run upright. As we worked our sledding paths to masterpieces of perfection, no walking back up on those paths was allowed. Our banks, just right, the trails down, so smooth, you bet you didn’t dare let your boot mar that art work. However every so often a patient watching us from the top of Clark hill couldn’t resist the urge to launch himself, (or herself), in a dive /belly flop slide headfirst down the hill! At those moments all sledding stopped while we helped the sliding patient retrieve his world of belongings that had burst loose in a scattered trail following along down the slope of the hill.
Sledding was only one of our winter games. Building snow forts, crude igloos and the ever-present snowman were also part of our yearly portfolio of winter pursuits. One activity stood above all these. Conditions had to be perfect, cold yet little or no snow. On State grounds ice skating was also a sought after activity for us kids, the last generation living on the grounds of Medfield State Hospital. Now many of my school age friends and their parents would say that ice skating and it atmosphere was only captured at Rocky Woods. And I can understand their sentiments however Rocky Woods is located across town from our neighborhood and required transportation not readily available to us. Luckily we could just walk to a field adjacent to our houses. Many days we, (and our skates), found a large thaw melt that had frozen with ice two or three inches thick. No air or water underneath, just frozen ground supporting the ice and all of us. With all that in place, a hockey game usually materialized.
My earlier memories of ice skating with my family while living on the grounds of Danvers State Hospital are integrated in my personal portrait of family. Those lasting images are now part of the foundation of my daily listing of blessings anchoring my journey through the past years. In Danvers there was an intersection of the road that was the main entrance to the Hospital. That road started down at Maple Street and ran up the hill to its top where the main Hospital structures were situated. With the imposing gothic Kirkbride building(s) located on the crown of the hill, Hathorne Hill, the terminus of this main road was reached. Back down at the aforementioned intersection, there was a building called Farm Hall. That brick building was the location of offices dedicated to the farm which included my late father’s office. Across the street a small field was the feature. Also located at this intersection was a fire hydrant. This hydrant was part of the Hospital’s infrastructure. My Father was also a member of the fire safety team which evidently gave him access to this hydrant used to fill the field with water. Picture if you will, a field that has rectangular banks raised about a fourth of my height at eight years of age. These one foot banks, pushed in place by the omnipresent Farmall red tractor with an attached plow, were also the anchor of a few park benches moved into position so the skates could be tied. Dad somehow had lights hoisted on poles around the rink so our blades could glide after the evening meals.
I was my father’s constant companion during the winters which were the back drop for each build of skating ice. He told me that good ice making started only when we had temperatures below 28 degrees and the forecast called for at least 48 hours below that temperature in the days to follow. Dad was fastidious about creating the ice rink. My treat was to be allowed to go with him in the evening to watch each layer of water freeze. He would crouch on a bank and I would mimic his every move. Together we would gaze across the pitch black water with the lights, rigged up so the hospital community could skate at night, reflecting the new born ice as it began to crystalize. Most evenings, Dad would explain why the temperatures had to be just right as he voiced the nuances of Don Kent’s latest forecast. He would always finish with his prediction of success or failure of the ice rink.
There are many times since those days and nights at the ice rink on the grounds of Danvers State Hospital the following irony is plain to see. The ice cold nature of self isolation of insanity and the ice cold nature of winter could be thawed by the frozen surface of a field of water. My father’s creation helped us, his family, share this rink, with the off-duty nurses, the doctors and labeled patients too. A skate in solitude broken by the blade’s song carving a melody of inclusion punctuated by a nod of approval as we passed each other by.
The sixth chapter in this series of essays is titled Eleven to Seven.
Thank you for reading.
Be in peace and joy!
Mark