Christmas at the Salvage YardWinter was always a great time, and Christmas made it even more special, growing up on the farm and having a dad who was a collector with a salvage yard. My sister and I were the salvage yard princesses and Dad was the King of the 57’s. Sledding was always a joy. We couldn’t wait till after that first big blizzard. It meant one thing — sledding at Uncle Irvin’s by Corson, S.D. Dad couldn’t just go sledding during the day-. We had to go at night. We would bundle up till we could hardly move and Dad would fill the back of the pickup with tires and bales. He would call all his brothers and he would come with his racing buddies.Dad would line up the tires, white letters up, on both sides of the sledding area and then light ’em up. The whole sledding area would light up like a runway in the South Dakota night. The stars would glitter from the glow off the burning tires.One of the best parts were our sleds. No normal metal saucers would do for our family. No, we slid on car hoods.Dad would tie baling twine on them and haul them up to the top of the hill. The big Chrysler hoods were the best for fitting people in, but Dad, bowtie to the core, thought the Chevy hood would fly faster. We would all pile on them and then fly down the hill. They would go so fast, especially waxed! It was a long way down and we all knew the routine if we started to roll — get out of the way of the hood! That didn’t happen too often.One time we went all the way down the hill really fast and kept going and going, down the bank of the creek, and onto the ice. We were all thrilled with our feat until we heard the crack of the ice. We all flew off there like we had our pants on fire! That hood I think is still in the creek. All those cars in the salvage yard also provided hiding places for our Christmas presents and posed a problem for the curious child. Where do you look? We knew when Mom went shopping because Dad would stay home and watch us kids. Then we would watch out the window as Mom would disappear among the chrome and metal and come back out empty handed. We did our best to find the gifts, and then we spied Mom’s hiding spot — the trunk of the black and white ‘57 Chevy — Dad’s restoration project in the corncrib. I remember walking up to the trunk, screwdriver in hand, looking at the hole where the lock used to be. Dad had showed us kids how to open trunk lids when he would buy stuff at the police auctions, so I knew I could get in there. I would imagine what I would find, but then I remembered what would happen if we peeked, so I walked to the garage and put the screwdriver back. I didn’t want any wrath and didn’t want to ruin a good surpriseWhen Christmas morning would come, we were so excited to see what was hid in the trunk of the ‘57. Dad would get done milking and then he had to warm up with his split pea soup. We could hardly wait — then we opened our presents and were glad we didn’t peek in the trunk of the ‘57 Chevy.