December 9
...serving up your daily dish.
GOT SLED? Once the morning cartoon shows are over, you've got to do something with the youngins. If you don't have the equipment for downhill action, you might want to pay a visit to American Royal Hardware, Watchung Plaza, arguably the most friendly store in town, which has the season’s hottest selection of slippery sleds (with hand grips). Choose from the Paricon, Snow Twist Blowup, Snow Tracker, Z Twister, and more – guaranteed to send your whole family barreling down the hill with big smiles. From $7.99. (Cue comments about how we used to slide down the hill on corrugated boxes).
And for the dad of the house....BEAM ME UP SCOTTY, and sideways, too! Ready, Aim, Fire! Here’s a cool tool for your favorite handyman/woman. The Straight-Line Laser Level 120 lets you hang picture frames, nail chair rail molding, level shelves, or create a straight line at any angle, single handed. Get creative with its uses (anyone for limbo?) within a 120 ft work area. No tape or rulers needed for precision work. $34.99, also at American Royal Hardware, 251 Park Street, Montclair.
December 9, 2005 in Shopping With Barista | Permalink
I've been using them for twenty years. Wild horses couldn't drag me into Home Depot. Charlie is the best - and they can answer/solve almost any problem you have!
SUPPORT SMALL LOCAL BUSINESSES!
Posted by: annie oakley | Dec 9, 2005 1:32:44 PM
Oh, corrugated cardboard was for the rich kids that lived in the mansion on the hill. We used to slide down on our butts. No goretex snowpants, neither.
patrick
Posted by: patrick | Dec 9, 2005 3:06:08 PM
At Northeast school they gave out garbage bags and lunch trays for the kids to slide down the hill one year. It was a one time deal cause the principal got in trouble!PS Clean garbage can lids works great in a pinch!
Posted by: oldtimer | Dec 9, 2005 4:03:45 PM
my fondest winter memories were when I was growing up in Mass and we used to attack the snow covered hills with our Flexible Flyer sleds.
Posted by: The Iceman | Dec 9, 2005 4:20:04 PM
I grew up somewhere much snowier than Montclair. One of my older brothers would inevitably have a non-working car parked at the far end of the driveway all winter -- we'd slide down the jalopy with our flying saucers. Seeing it in writing sounds kind of trashy but it was loads of fun then!
Posted by: HF | Dec 9, 2005 5:04:18 PM
Ok. Enough with Glen Ridger kids, my time to spew. Took my little one to Mountainside to sled. We had a fabulous time except for the rudest group of middle schoolers (and parents).
While the parents stood and looked on a group overtook the middle making it extremely hard to pass and dangerous, since, as you were sledding, they refused to move out of the way. So you hit them or had to stop.
Well, I approached the kids and asked them to move. And was very nice explaining that there was a man on the bottom of the hill with his megaphone who was asking them to slide down and walk in an orderly manner to the cones and then back up again. I said how fun it may be what they were doing but that there was an assortment of younger kids and someone was bound to get hurt.
I asked if any parents were there and they wouldn't acknowledge.
There was a woman who seemed to be with them but didn't say anything, as I had my conversation with the group of 10 or 12 kids. (There was a group of parents talking that stared at me and listened to my "speech" but no one acknowledged their children or me.)
Needless to say, they all formed a line in the middle with their sleds and then they all started crashing into each other. Well within five minutes of my conversation, a child was toppled (got hit in the head pretty hard and was crying) and the woman who was lurking with the group turned out to be the parent of the now, hurt child.
She never acknowledged me, instead shot me a hateful glance, as if I had been the one who assaulted her child. And her child also glared at me.
It wasn't until I asked the man with the megaphone to come up to the top of the hill to disperse the group that anyone made a move to get these kids to sled "by the rules".
I can't understand passive parenting especially jeopardising your child while right in front of you.
And that is Montclair-or maybe just "parenting today"--The parents huddled in the group talking about parent teacher conferences and how involved they are (and that was exactly what they were talking about)-while their children
are "wilding "right in their faces.
I couldn't wait for my child to finally be old enough to go down by herself on Mountainside this year but
I wouldn't let her ride down by herself. We still had a good time but I just don't get it.
It's one thing to be obnoxious when your parents aren't with you-I can kinda understand that-but to be so while your parents look on that slays me.
And to those obnoxious parents may angels fly with your children.
Posted by: cstarling | Dec 9, 2005 5:27:21 PM
