I recently submitted this story to a ski journal hoping to win a ski jacket or a pair of goggles. The journal eventually published the top ten stories, including mine. I ended up buying a ski jacket at EMS and living with my old goggles. This is a picture of my big brother with the old Ham farm in the background.
1960, just seven, I pulled my sled across the yard to the old Ham Farm. Dr. and Mrs. Dodge lived there with seven boys, more or less. It was a place where kids were usually left alone to amuse themselves. None of the boys were around, but I found a cast-off wooden ski lying in the yard; solid wood, flat, turned up tip. It didn’t take long to find another. The skis reached the middle snap of my Mighty Mack and had toe straps, a maple finish, no label. Those skis had it all over any attraction the old place held for me, including the pet raccoons inside the house, and a crockery urn in the pantry that held some mysterious, pickled creature from the boys’ museum of natural history.
The farmhouse was built into a hillside and the take-off for my adventure was right beside a bay window, where I could see Dr. Dodge in his red, leather-upholstered chair. He was reading and didn’t notice me as I jammed my rubber boots into the straps and shuffled off between him and a huge honeysuckle bush. I couldn’t get away fast enough to whatever might happen, hopefully unseen by those inside.
I passed an apple tree, crossed a little patch of open ground covered with apples, then the hill got steeper. The first floor windows moved high above me and I slid perilously close to the granite wall of the walk-in cellar. I knew that wall. They had a ping pong table inside and our game was to carom the balls off the granite, sending them flying out the door. Today the wall terrified me as the little skis shot me deeper into the shadow of the immense house.
I knew I could outrun the hill and cross the dirt lane that ran behind the house, maybe flying into the open barn that held the sheep and a couple of grouchy geese. I’d been there before too. I loved to pet the sheep, even though my mother said they’d give me ringworm, and I’d eat their molasses feed by the handful.
I never made it to the barn, or my grain snack. A little retaining wall that ran alongside the lane was my undoing. Like a ping pong ball , I was launched, stalled in mid air, and quickly fell back to earth on my backside in a mix of gravel, snow, and gooseshit. One ski was off, my boot and sock gone. I rubbed my skinny wrists, numb with cold, and glanced up to see Mrs. Dodge, looking down at me from her airy, back porch. She had both hands on her clothesline which ran high above the lane and over to the barn. My mother used to say that with seven boys, Mrs. Dodge was the hardest working woman in town. On this day Mrs. Dodge was right at it, bringing in her wash, and she and I were the only ones to know about my first time on skis.
