Taking a Snow Day : Wilmington Youths Visit the Slopes of Chilao Flats to Play in the Powder

“Oh my God, it’s just so cool! Like, when you’re flying down the hill on top of the snow, ya know? Like, the snow, it’s bad! Really bad!”

Such were the delighted descriptions of snow by a group of Wilmington youths who cavorted in it Saturday--in many cases for the first time. Some bundled in ski parkas and others only in T-shirts, about 35 youths boarded a bus at the Wilmington Teen Center, which sponsored the day trip, and rode to Chilao Flats in Angeles National Forest.

As the bus climbed northward on Angeles Crest Highway, it passed streams rushing down craggy slopes into jeweled pools of sunlit ice. The children, ranging from 8 to 18, were enchanted.

“Oh, lookit!” they gasped. And, “ Ay que bonito!”

It’s a small thing, really, a few hours of play in the snow. But for children who daily are surrounded by the gritty, unrelenting poverty of Wilmington, the outing offered a brief but intense time of unalloyed childhood.

It was the type of dramatic change in scenery that wealthier, less geographically isolated children often take for granted.

“We tell the kids to have dreams and strive, but if they don’t see anything else than what they have in their little area, they have no idea what to dream about,” said Connie Calderon, director of the teen center.

“Sometimes I’ll take them to the movie theater or somewhere, and they’ll see a lot of Anglos standing outside--more than they ever see all at once. And they’ll ask me: ‘Can anybody come here? Can just anybody buy a ticket and go inside?’

“Kids whose parents have a car and money, they get to go to a movie house or to eat in a restaurant. A lot of these kids never have those experiences,” she said.

Within seconds of getting off the bus, youngsters more used to playing pool at the teen center or making sure they always look cool had started a fierce snowball fight.

Renee Castaneda, 12, rushed her friend Esther Lopez and washed her face with snow. And Trina Thornton, also 12, took a snowball on the head.

Then some of the girls set out to build a snowman that at first resembled a pyramid.

“They see a winter wonderland on television, but they don’t know what it takes to build a snowman,” Calderon said, shaking her head and laughing. Ultimately, a credible job was done, and a yard-high Frosty-like creature emerged.

Sledding on pieces of cardboard provided by the teen center, however, was the most popular pursuit.

Jorge Hernandez, 15, who had never seen snow, rapidly adopted an all-out, gonzo sledding style, hurling himself down on the cardboard and racing, whipping, tumbling and flipping to the end of the slope. It didn’t matter, he said, that he wore a T-shirt with no jacket: Sledding is hot work “if you really go for it, ya know?”

Meanwhile, Mexican-born Jose Dennys, a lanky and friendly 18-year-old, for a while simply looked at the snow. Dennys, who has lived alone on the streets since he was 13, has become a popular guy in the few months he’s been in Wilmington. Painting over graffiti and working odd jobs for food, he sometimes sleeps in abandoned cars or wherever he can.

“Es tan bonita, “ he said. It’s so pretty.

The other kids think he is great. So after Dennys worked his way through a snowball fight and tentatively dared to slide around on the ice ponds, the others talked him into sitting on a piece of cardboard and whizzing to the bottom of a slope. He happily did so until it was time to go home.

In the meantime, a couple of Boy Scout troops arrived, and everyone began to play together, the Scouts sharing their bouncy black inner tubes with the Wilmington kids for better sledding. In twos, threes and fours, the boys piled on top of each other and rode the tubes, yelling to a crash and sprawl at the bottom. And they all squared off in snowball fights.

A few of the Scouts ganged up on Trina, and in a time-honored courting ritual pelted the pretty 12-year-old.

Another youth, apparently misunderstanding the nature of snowball fights, stamped his foot and shouted as ball after ball missed his troop chaperon, Dr. Tony Soza of Hawthorne: “Why do you keep ducking?”

Oblivious to adult warnings that they would get wet and cold, Esther, Trina and Renee sprawled on a pond of ice and then lay back against a small snowbank. “I wish I could come to the snow whenever I wanted,” Esther said.

“I wish I could come to the snow all the time,” Trina answered.

“I wish I could live where it always snows,” said Renee Castaneda. “Ya know what I mean?”