It took some time, but eventually he found what he was looking for, an old Plymouth car hood, one with an exaggerated high curve on the front that provided a wall that you could sit behind as you screamed downhill. It was large enough to easily accommodate the entire family and some of the neighbors. The surface of the hood could be polished with wax to make it faster than the sensible would ever wish to go. It gained speed and momentum as you accelerated down the hill and would travel further out onto the lake than any lighter conveyance could.

It also provided the added feature that it could easily topple sizable saplings and make its own trail if you ventured from your intended course. Steering was accomplished with two low profile aluminum strips that were bolted to the margins of the diverging wings on the back of the hood, at just the right angles. When the passengers leaned to one side, the corresponding strip would bite into the snow and direct the autoboggan in that direction. Leaning back again allowed the vehicle to return to the center of the course.

All of the children in the neighborhood were incredulous to think that youngsters from the dark ages could have designed and manufactured such a wondrous vehicle. Apparently, the construction of such a marvelous conveyance was even more unbelievable, since they were certain that in those distant times, children didn't even know what a computer was.

One day, after an afternoon of fierce sledding, to his wife's dismay, Richard insisted upon telling his children one of the many elaborate stories that adorned, if not totally comprised, those primitive days when he was a child. The children were always eager to hear one of these tales. Richard suspected that they even believed some of them. This one happened to be true.

The story was about sledding with autoboggans and Richard's cousin Tommy. Richard's son was sure it took place in the Pleistocene epoch, as he had met Tommy, and Tommy clearly hailed from that era. Richard settled back to begin his yarn, which was entitled, "The Legend of Tommy and the Autoboggan".

As the story goes, one fine Sunday in January, when the air was frigid and the snow icy cold, all of the neighborhood lads went to the hill they called "Lone Star", towing the bonnets from a variety of makes and models of junked cars. It took an hour to make the hill perfect, but from then on each run produced greater and greater speed and allowed the sleds to reach further and further out into the field at the bottom of the hill.

Tommy was younger than most and a bit chubby at that particular time in his life. Because of this added girth and the excessive layers of clothing his mother insisted upon, Tommy grew tired with repeated climbs up the hill, even though he was not required to assist the other boys as they pulled the giant sleighs to the top.

Car hoods screamed down the hill, one after another, and often were airborne as they conquered smaller hills on the way to the bottom. The hoods were towed up the hill off to one side, and so there were always boys climbing the hill, pulling their sleds behind them, while others, who had already reached the summit, began their descent.

Tommy, who was fatigued and obviously not paying attention, lost his footing and slipped out onto the the runway. As it would happen, this occurred just as a hood teaming with other older and more substantial ruffians was gaining speed and bearing down on him. There was no opportunity to regain a foothold on the firmly packed snow and no time to crawl off to the side. Nor was their time for the boys on the sledge to turn and avoid him. Alas, this car hood filled with horrified boys roared over Tommy and disappeared over the next rise.

The members of Tommy's group were immediately dumbfounded by the spectacle they had witnessed. No one moved. Their feet seemed frozen to the hill. Some began to fabricate stories to share with Tommy's mother, speaking them out loud to be sure they sounded convincing. Some already insisted that they had never been there in the first place, that they had gone skating instead. Others said and did nothing. They simply began to cry.

Richard and another of his cousins, more reasonable members of the straggle and clearly the bravest men on the hill, scrambled to examine Tommy and offer assistance if it wasn't already too late for that. They found him face down and neatly compressed into the snow. His back was flush with the surface of the run. For all practical purposes, Tommy looked like a gingerbread snow-boy who had just been sharply and cleanly cut from the plump center of a roll of dough. Richard could see this cookie cutter in his mind. It wasn't a christmas tree cookie cutter or a snowman cookie cutter. It was a Tommy cookie cutter.

Richard and his companion each grasped an arm and peeled Tommy from the snow. They both knew the only thing worse than telling their parents that Tommy had died on the hill would be to come home without his body.

No sound or movement emanated from where Tommy lie. As they extracted him from the snow, they feared that he must have been reduced to a mere shadow of his former chubby self, but were amazed to find that he was roughly the same thickness as he had been before the sled compressed him into the snow. They could not see his eyes and guessed that they had popped out and were lost forever somewhere in the deepest snow. It even seemed possible that they had been driven deep into his skull by the packed snow that now filled his eye sockets. Richard pulled Tommy's cap up the see if brains were coming out of his ears. They too were packed with snow. Tommy's nose was bright red, as were his cheeks, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his motionless mouth.

Suddenly, the snow fell from Tommy's eyes and they opened wide. He sputtered and snow flew from his mouth in irregular clumps with minute streams of freezing spittle trailing behind. Tommy gasped to regain his breath and then started to cry. It was a pitiful and mournful cry, but Richard's heart began to beat again as they dragged Tommy to the top of the hill. Richard concluded that crying was a good sign, and so were the facts that they couldn't find any more blood and there were no brains coming out of Tommy's ears.

With each passing moment it seemed more likely that Tommy would survive, but they were all certain that he could never be the same. By the time the "hit and run sledders" returned to the top of the hill, Tommy, who had regained his wind, was breathing regularly again and had been able to stifle his sobs.

Harley cautiously approached. He was a portly young boy and older than anyone else present on that grim day. He had been front-and-center on the runaway sled that had surged over Tommy. Tommy gazed upward to meet Harley's fear-filled eyes, but said nothing. Then, to the astonishment of everyone who had gathered in a great semicircle around the two, Tommy threw off his mittens and pounded Harley's stomach with a barrage of blows that even startled Tommy. As he did this, Tommy screeched the words that Richard would never forget, "You booger-faced butt-worm, Harley. What's the matter with you, anyway?"

At that moment, all who were present knew that Tommy had miraculously returned to normal, or as close to it as could be expected. They further hoped that if they hurried, Tommy would still be alive when they dropped him off at home and surmised that if they covered their faces with their scarves, Tommy's mother could never be certain of who had been with him on that fateful day.

Even the most foolish among them concluded that this day of sledding was over. They amassed their ranks and gathered their great steel minions to begin the long march toward home. Tommy, the revered survivor of a terrible tragedy, regally road on the sled that had almost defeated him. On that day, under the mackerel skies of the frozen north, the legend of Tommy and the autoboggan was born.