Topical Guide 249
Mark Dorset
Amusements and Pastimes: Sleigh Ride
LUTHER ALSO PROVIDED the occasion for Lorna’s introduction to the acrobatics of sex. It happened a few years later, one winter, on the day of Luther’s first sleigh ride of the season. …
The first sleigh ride of the winter was an event that Luther began to anticipate in the fall. He needed the infusion of daring that he got from that first ride of the winter, and his need increased throughout the fall. He lived in two rooms, down in the valley, near the mills, but he kept his sleigh in his brother’s barn, behind his brother’s house, beside his brother’s boxy farm wagon, where it stood idle until the winter. In the winter of the year in which Bertha turned sixteen, after the first good snowfall, when Uncle Luther arrived to take the sleigh out for the first run of the season, he found Bertha sitting in the sleigh, waiting for him, shivering. She begged him to take her with him on the first ride, though she knew that he always made the first run alone.
“You know that I always make the first run alone, Bertha,” said Luther.
“I know you do,” said Bertha. “But this year I want you to take me with you.”
“I’m inclined to drive like a madman on the first run, Bertha. I don’t want to put you in danger. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“I want to feel the danger,” said Bertha. “I want you to take me with you, Uncle Luther.”Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 2
In small [American] country towns or villages, parties of a dozen or twenty young people (male and female) embark on board three or four sleighs, cutters, etc., and when the nights are beautifully clear, but cold as severe frost can make them, they will drive ten or fifteen miles into the country to some comfortable little tavern . . . where they spend a few hours in mirth and jollity, regaling themselves with the best that the establishment affords; when, having ate, drank, sung, danced, and “frolicked” until a pretty late hour, the sleighs are once more got ready, and in high glee and spirits they drive merrily home again. Each horse being provided with a string of good bells, the lonely and silent forests are often thus enlivened at the solemn hour of midnight by the jocund tinkling of the rapidly-passing sleigh bells. Many little love affairs are said to originate in these “sleighing-frolicks.”
“Sleighs and Sleighing Frolics,” The Penny Magazine, September 9, 1837, via Mansion Musings, the blog of the Bartow-Pell House
A recent article, “Get Ready For the New, Improved Second,” in The New York Times, prompts me to recommend a wonderful Norwegian movie called 1001 Grams.
From Kanopy, where you can watch 1001 Grams for free by using your public library card for access: Marie is a scientist who works in the Mass Department of the Norwegian Metrology Service where her father Ernst is director. When Ernst surprisingly falls ill, Marie is asked to go to Paris to recalibrate the National Norwegian kilo and take part in an international seminar where colleagues from around the world discuss new ways of defining the actual weight of a kilo. Through her scientific journey, it is actually her own measurement of disappointment, grief and love that ends up on the scale. In Paris she meets Pi, a former scientist at the esteemed Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, and through him the possibility of love. Finally Marie is forced to come to terms with how much a human life truly weighs and which measurements she intends to live by.
Here’s the trailer:
[more to come on Monday, May 2, 2022]
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