No 1970′s/80′s childhood was complete without a snowmobile suit.
Elastic at the cuffs and both ankles. One-piece construction with a continuous zipper that ran from neck to the bottom of one leg. And a belt.
Recommended Videos
Well, a belt in only the most rudimentary sense. I recall it being nylon with the most goofy interlocking buckle—mirror S’s that somehow fit together. And once the suit was assembled, zipped up and belted, it was time for the mittens/gloves and boots. And wool ski-mask that you put on your head like a skully and then pulled down over your face—the better to trap the snot.
Let’s pause here for a second and remember that winter recess lasted…what—30 minutes? So you’d spend 10 minutes getting this decidedly non-waterproof, non-Gore-Tex, barely insulated clown suit on, 10 minutes overheating outside on the sled hill behind the school, and then 10 minutes taking it off sopping wet once recess was over.
And then the classroom would smell like wet, stinky kid socks and boots for the rest of the school day. And the stench was just from the class bully’s attire! Now add the rest of us 28 kids. It was like those heat mirages you see rising from asphalt on a 95-degree day. Except those waves of fumes were not a mirage. They made it hard to see Mrs. Paul, which was horrible because Mrs. Paul looked like an angel.
Ahem. Strike that. I never said it.
The boots! Yes the boots were ridiculous. This was pre-Moon Boot era (itself a 1981-ish revolution that deserves its own separate blog). The boots I’m speaking of were essentially useless. They matched the clown suit in the sense that they had buckles and zippers, a foam insert and rubber soles that began cracking as soon as you walked out of K-Mart with them in October.
Meanwhile the mittens/gloves connected to your sleeve via alligator clips that were less clamp-jawed alligator and more toothless old poodle hanging on by his gums. Which means any physical exertion sent them flying over the playground fence, never to be seen again. And don’t get me started on putting them on in the first place. The first one was a cinch; the second went attached about as easy as Matt Damon growing crops on Mars.
By the end of recess, the snow-covered ground at Isbister Elementary looked like a yard sale by way of Mud Day at Nankin Mills Park. The most horrendous trampled-upon stew of brown snow, shards of churned up grass, and a graveyard of lost gear. And then there’d be a snowstorm during Christmas break and cover it all up until Spring, at which point none of it fit anymore anyway.
Which was fine. Because, Moon Boots!