The final snowball...years later

Juvenile Delinquency just wasn't a good fit

Growing up in southern New Hampshire, a quiet, quaint little town called Brookline, life moved slowly. We had one blinking yellow light at a four-way stop but nobody knew why. Generally speaking, you need traffic to justify a light and I can never remember seeing two cars back-to-back pausing at that light.

For excitement, sometimes we’d walk alongside Route 13, the “major” highway that ran from the Massachusetts line all the way to Milford and beyond, a straight, flat road we had to cross to get to Camp Tevya. Sometimes, for excitement, we would pump our right arm when we saw a big tractor trailer rumble by so they would toot their horn. That was big.

Consequently, juvenile delinquency languished in our town. Outside of the time someone wrote “We all know that Rhodes is a dink” in black paint on the small white fence over the little pond near the Village Store, referring to a ticket-happy Deputy who soon left the two-man force, I can’t think of any, other than the occasional speeding ticket or kids getting caught drinking a six-pack of Narragansett Beer, which you would think would be punishment enough.

Things slowed down — if that’s imaginable — when winter came. Naturally, we found ways to cope with the boredom, which occasionally included the throwing of a snowball.

For Floridians - THIS is a snowball

I know this might be shocking to some, particularly those who grew up in a pampered, luxurious, snowless environment. But yes, we threw snowballs. Often at each other. Sometimes at assorted targets. And this is where the trouble begins.

Rising high above Lake Potanipo (I know, it’s a stupid name) was an impressive rock structure we called Rock Raymond. No idea who Raymond was or why the rock was named for him. It provided a sweeping, majestic, truly inspirational view of the lake and the surrounding area. It was a bit of a climb, particularly in the slippery, snowbound winter but it was a challenge we accepted. It might sound goofy to someone who grew up in Orlando, say, with daily sunshine and miniature golf and arcades and tourist stops every 30 feet. But in Brookline, that was top-notch entertainment.

The nornal route to Rock Raymond — there were no signs or anything — was to take a hard right behind the Tevya cabins and trudge up this ascending slope winding and winding until you reached the top. But this one day, for reasons I’m still not clear on, we decided to descend in a different direction, one that led us into deliquency.

One section of Route 13, as flat a straightaway as you can imagine, was blasted out of a giant granite wall, the cliffs, we cleverly called them. You could see the spring water leaking down and freezing in the frigid air, giant icicles. And when our path homeward on that day somewhat innocently led us to the tippy top of those cliffs, evil thoughts began to creep in.

Beneath us was the highway, long, straight Route 13. And occasionally, there would be a truck passing through. And then a car. And we had all this snow around us, God-given ammunition. On this particular excursion, I think with us was Bobby, now a retired Air Force veteran, Joey, now a retired pastor, and Mark, who now is officially retired but still a rabid Al Jolson fan. (No, we are unable to explain that one, either.)

And I’m not certain whose idea it was to, uh, toss a few snowballs down at the intermittent moving targets below. I can absolve Mark, whose ability to throw was at best negligible. Bobby had a fine arm but little ability to direct what he was throwing to where he intended it to go. And Joey had a fine arm and was also left-handed, which needs no further explanation. I will admit to my God that I had the best arm and the best control. So it might well have been me, my conscience is clear on that.

But let’s just agree on this: The snowball throwing commenced. Targeting giant trucks rumbling by, that seemed cool. If you were accurate enough to hit one, no big deal. The driver would never know or feel it. So we tried that for a while, laughing at how close we came or how badly we overshot. It was, it seemed, harmless fun. And we were up on top of a cliff, it wasn’t as if anybody was going to come up and apprehend us.

Then we heard it. A roaring, revving engine kind of thing, ripping down Route 13 as if it was the Indianapolis 500. I recognized the car, a silvery greenish Ford Mustang owned by a guy who lived across from our school. We saw it all the time, easily the coolest, most envied automobile, not only in our town but probably our county. And here he came, rip-roaring down Route 13, the sound of the blaring engine echoing all over the still and frigid scenery.

We hadn’t thrown at cars yet. Not out of caution, necessarily, it was Brookline. There weren’t any. But here came one now, roaring, easily over the speed limit, making enough noise to wake the deceased.

We let our snowballs fly. Again, I think Mark refrained, perhaps afraid he might errantly hit one of us. But they were released and it seemed like that scene in “Braveheart” where Longshanks has the archers fire on the Scots. “Looose.”

And my snowball, I confess it was delivered from my own hand, scored a direct, resounding hit on the driver’s side door —”booom” — of that Mustang, as perfect a hit as a Tom Brady to Randy Moss 60-yard TD pass. Maybe better. I did it from a cliff.

The sound of the snowball smacking into the door was even louder than the roaring engine and the driver, who I can say now — the statute of limitations has passed for snowball throwing — I believe was Teddy Sironen, whom I did not know.

Startled by the sound — if not the stunning accuracy of my throw — Teddy hit the brakes and I can still hear the screech of his tires, leaving a long black rubber stain on the chilly asphalt of Route 13.

It appeared he was going to get out of his car. And Bobby, as I recall, fired a secondary snowball, sort of a parting shot in his direction — Bobby had that sense of humor — as we headed back towards Rock Raymond at top speed. I easily outdistanced the rest, fearing retribution even after such a perfect throw.

When we arrived back at Rock Raymond, our adrenaline pumping as it almost never did in Brookline in those days, we sat on the great rock and laughed and laughed until the tears on our cheeks were nearly frozen.

We innocently — or so we thought — started to walk back home through Camp Tevya, joking and joshing as though nothing out-of-the-ordinary had occurred. Suddenly, at the end of the road, came a blue police cruiser, Brookline’s one cop car. And we immediately recognized the driver, Chief Alvin Taylor.

We liked him and greeted him with smiles and waves. He pulled up next to us.

“Have you guys seen anybody throwing snowballs on the highway there?”

And, literally, we hadn’t. We were on a cliff. Which might seem a technicality. But when you’re dealing with the law, you need to be precise.

“Nope,” we said. Might have been Joey, who, of course, was trying to cover his butt with the Man/Woman Upstairs as he would become a pastor many years later.

“OK,” Chief Taylor said, rolling up his car window. “Let me know if you do.”

We saluted and he drove away.

I have held that story close to my vest all these many years. And when God decided it was time for me to cleanse my soul, dusting our part of northern Florida with a record-setting generous amount of snow — the first snow I’d seen in 30-plus years — I knew what I had to do.

Here it is, recorded on film, my FINAL snowball toss. Thank you, Lord. My conscience is, at last, clean.