ORANGE CRUSH
January 23rd, Wednesday of this week, will mark one year since the passing of my father. The last year has caught me on countless occasions reviewing in my mind, my upbringing. Also to marvel at how much things have changed in just a few decades. Growing up in my neighborhood it was routine to be out on summer nights, even as a seven or eight year old, until streetlights came on, or later. Other than the cursory "don't talk to strangers" from my parents, there was no unsettling fear or worry on my part or theirs. As for strangers, there really weren't any in what was then a very small town. One of the crown jewels of my childhood was Twin Tows. It was jogged back to my memory by a sip of Orange Crush soda. Let me explain.
Twin Tows is not a reference to a birth defect of the foot, but rather the name of a small rope-tow ski hill just a half mile from the house where I grew up. It was owned by friends of my parents, Natalie(Nat) and Arthur Hodgen and John and Mille MacDonald. From my house, we could ski through a back field, over a brook, more winding fields and eventually arrive at the top of the hill. A rather steep incline for three hundred yards or so, then kind of a valley, then another incline. A complete run lasted about a minute. There was one single rope and about fifty yards to the left, a double rope tow. Just telephone poles with wheel rims spiked on at the top for the rope to ride on. The engine house was a small wood structure powered by an old Buick Roadmaster engine and an ingenious contraption of gears and pulleys. I would love being there early when John and Arthur would fire up the beast and as a young kid it was like a shuttle launch. Only a piece of nylon rope strung across the unloading spot served as a safety cord, and more than one youngster got a scarf or coat wrapped around the rope, missed the trip line, and came within inches of being sucked into the engine house and run through the works like an oversized meat-grinder. Imagine insuring something like this today? No way.
Since the owners were friends, me and my friends got special privileges. We would shovel snow into the ruts of the tracks under the rope and get a free day of skiing. This saved us a dollar, the normal all-day, all-trails price. More importantly, it gave us a sense of authority which we abused in many ways. There were trails off to the sides, down through the woods, where many young loves got that first kiss. There was night skiing on Tuesday and Thursday nights and they would play Austrian music through the loudspeakers. When recently looking at old home movies, I remembered how there would be hundreds of people here on weekends, none of us knowing then how precious a place this was.
Olympic medalist George Frost got his freestyle skiing start at Twin Tows. One day George built what we all deemed to be the most outrageous jump we had ever seen. It was about fifty times bigger than normal. We feared he had eaten a bad hot dog from the warm-up hut. It stood about six feet tall, then he approached it, dropped his poles, and did a forward flip. We were all stunned. This began his career which brought him, years later, to the Olympics. There were more stories than I could ever recall here. The day Joe Devine skied right through the rental shed and broke his leg. Using the snowbanks and jumping over the road and into the adjacent parking lot. And all the time, forging friendships and a community bond that would last a lifetime.
It was that Orange soda that brought me back, though. I never drink soda, but I sure did back then. At the bottom of the hill was a warm-up hut with a general congregation room for putting ski boots on and off and sitting down for a few minutes, and a snack bar staffed by Nat and Mille where you could get a hot dog and a soda for fifty cents. Naturally, I used my family connection to my advantage here as well, and it was not unusual to kill a half dozen dogs on a cold night or Saturday. It's amazing to think of it now, the whole place, the time, the people, the Normal Rockwellness of it all, and how very fortunate I was to have grown up in this place, at that time. Just another reason to say, "thanks,Dad". This Crush is for you.