Rusty was bleeding heavily from a gash on his chin, but we figured the cold winter air would take care of it and, anyway, bloody streaks in the snow only enhanced the realism of the game.

The game, in this case, was called “Krauting,” and it was one we engaged in whenever the snowbanks grew to eye level or higher.

Not a single one of us understood that the word “Kraut” was an offensive term for a German soldier. All we knew was that it had been a word used in wartime somewhere, at some point, and that was enough to cause the word to take on almost talismanic properties.

“Kraut!” Rusty would holler, plumes of frost flying from his mouth like an exclamation point, and the rest of us would hurl ourselves over the nearest snowbank for cover. “Ten o’clock and coming fast!”

The blood-thirsty enemy in this case was a UPS truck, barreling down Hazelwood Avenue, thumping over potholes and frost heaves as it went. This was our loathed enemy, although how to react to it was never quite clear. The problem with “Krauting” was that there was no real method to it. We were neither on offense nor defense. When the word “Kraut” was called, one simply had to react in the most dramatic way possible, whether that meant diving over a jagged mountain of snow or flinging an ice chunk at the boy closest to you.

“Ow! What’d you do that for? I’m not a Kraut!”

“Yeah, well … You look like one. Die, Kraut, die!”

“Hey, cool! My chin is bleeding!”

Stupid game. And fun! Krauting was a pastime that made us look forward to snowstorms, and the bigger they were, the better. The only downside was that the snow would cover the ice on the pond behind the animal shelter, forcing us to clear it with shovels if we wanted to play pickup hockey. Which we did, because pickup hockey was another great way to get bloody and bruised and to inflict such joys upon dear friends. High sticks to the cheek, elbows to the eyes and frozen pucks to unprotected shins. Man, that’s living.

The upside to fresh snow, in addition to battling UPS trucks, was the opportunity to get on our bellies and fly down steep hills on thin sheets of plastic. “Sledding,” we called it, and the mission here was pretty simple. You wanted to be the kid to fly down the hill the fastest; to reach the highest altitude while sailing over the “jump,” and to suffer the most theatrical trauma at the end of the ride.

“Whoa! Richie just cracked his head against the side of the armory!”

“Oh, yeah? I think I broke my ankle. Look! I can hardly walk.”

“That ain’t nothing. Have you seen Rusty’s chin? You can see his tongue through the hole.”

It’s amazing that Rusty lived beyond the age of 13 and that Richie can still pronounce his own name correctly two out of three tries.

When we weren’t Krauting, sledding or hockey-ing, we were bombing cars. This entailed making round, hard-packed balls of snow — snowballs, we called them — and firing them at passing cars on Hazelwood Avenue. Hazelwood, in those days, was our Dresden. The aim of snowballing, of course, was to throw your “snowball” as hard and as accurately as possible, striking a meaty part of a passing car or truck and creating the loudest thud possible. The louder the thud, the greater the chance that the driver of said car or truck would screech to a stop and give chase.

Few things were more invigorating and life-affirming than the wintertime, snowballing foot chase. The threat of being caught loomed large: It was generally accepted that a kid caught during a snowball chase would likely never be seen again, because anyone ferocious enough to chase a pack of wild kids through the snow was clearly a deranged killer with a stack of dead kid bones in his basement.

In spite of this, it was customary, while running for your life, to shove the friend in front of you from behind in hopes of sending him sailing into deep snow from which he would not be able to escape. Why we were so willing to sacrifice our comrades thusly — giggling insanely as we did so — is a mystery of the young mind. It was “Lord of the Flies” out there in the woods along Hazelwood.

A perfect winter day in those times would entail a sweet group of outdoor sports. A little Krauting in the morning, an hour or two of pickup hockey in the early afternoon, bloody sledding behind the armory and then, after dark, a round of snowballing and, hopefully, the utter demise of one’s best friend.

We slept like babies, stinking of Bactine and Band-Aids, at the end of such winter days.

I don’t know at what point the season was transformed from joyous wonderland to utter nuisance and complete disruption to better things. It seemed to happen over the course of one day. Suddenly, snow wasn’t a place to play, it was something that soaked our feet and which needed to be cleared from driveways through the forced labor that was shoveling. Winter became a long, bleak pause between good times rather than the source of them. Childhood gave way to the earliest beginnings of adulthood and that was that. Krauts were no longer the enemy; it was winter itself.

I bring it up only because it occurs to me that I almost never see kids playing in the snow anymore. They’ll stomp through cold piles of it to get to their video games, it seems, but never pause long enough to hurl themselves over a snowbank or throw a chunk of it, completely unprovoked, at their best friend.

It’s sad and disappointing and not life-affirming at all. It makes me want to step outside where new-fallen snow this very moment is winking with crystallized promise. It makes me want to plunge my grownup hands into its cold depths, grab a great sheet of it and throw it right at Rusty’s face.

I haven’t seen the dude in 20 years now, but I’m pretty sure he has it coming.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. He apologizes if you were offended by the term “snowball” or “sledding.” Email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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