HOME

Arts Sciences

Health American Life

Snake Races

The William E. Dever schoolyard was huge and it was covered with finely crushed white limestone gravel, no grass. This is where we would hold our snake races. The procedure was simple. Word would get around about the day and approximate time for racing. We would all get out our pet racing snakes and meet in the schoolyard. Someone would take a stick and scratch out a large circle in the crushed stone. This was the finish line. The center of the circle was the starting point. A straight track was no good because you never knew which direction a snake would go. The circle configuration was just perfect for racing snakes because you started in the center and it made no difference which direction the snake went. When the first snake reached the edge of the circle, the race was over. We often made bets of marbles, maybe a fruit or some candy, whatever could be agreed upon. With all the bets laid down and everybody ready to race, we would take our snake and advance to the center of the circle. Somebody would give a signal and we would drop our snake on the ground and quickly retreat behind the finish line. The first snake to get to the edge of the circle was declared the winner. It was good clean fun. Arguments were kept to a minimum and there were never more than two or three fistfights over the course of the summer racing season.

I quickly discovered that overcast days were no good for snake racing. Sometimes the snake would just stay in one place and not move till threatened by someone approaching. But on warm, bright sunshiny days, the gravel surface was hot under their bellies and it was the hot stone that would make them move fast. The hotter it was, the faster they would go. Another thing I learned was that the size of the snake mattered when it came to racing. Small snakes less than a foot long would give a lot of action. They wiggled furiously when put on the hot gravel, but their forward progress wasn't all that great because they were just too small. Large snakes in the range of two feet or more in length had tougher under-belly's and although they would move on the hot stone, they did it in what appeared to be a hazy lazy ho hum fashion. For champion racing snakes, I found the ideal size to be fourteen to sixteen inches long. I won a lot of marbles putting my snakes up against the bigger snakes.

One time a kid had what he called a milk snake. He said he got it from a farm in Wisconsin. It was not the garden variety; it was huge, about 2 inches in diameter and well over three feet long. The taunts were to the effect that this big snake would catch mine and eat him. In the world of snakes, that happens. Big snakes do eat little snakes. I reasoned that for his snake to eat my snake, his snake would first have to catch my snake, and my best guess was that would not happen. So we raced. I was right, it was no contest. We raced a couple more times, each time my snake won. I remember the incident because of all the moaning and bellyaching from this other kid and his friends. They had all assumed that bigger was better, and that the bigger the snake, the faster it would go. I knew otherwise and I knew it well before my eleventh birthday.

Thanks for your participation.

HOME

Arts Sciences

Health American Life