I have recurring dreams about skiing. It’s strange because I wasn’t born into a skiing family. My mother never skied and my sister never in my memory. My dad used skis like other Vermonters of his generation, for free thrills on winter days. However, given the realities of the 1930s I don’t think he had much leisure time for even free thrills. Despite this, I feel a strong inherent connection to the sport that has helped define our state. When I was very small I remember taking rides that ended in the parking lots of ski areas, places we called ski tows. The mountains were large, the activity perplexing. They remain some of my earliest memories, and in the twisted way of dreams, have been retooled in my subconscious.
The time is always early evening. Alpenglow reflects off the deep pillows of stark white snow, but also the powder blues, bright yellows and lime greens of painted infrastructure. Long, sharply creased shadows stretch away from the graceful lift towers and an assortment of ski conveyance. I see familiar pomas, t-bars and ancient wooden chairs, but also funiculars not to be found this side of Dr. Seuss, all evoking a sense of time past. The snow cats, too, in all their art-decoed glory, as though designed to surpass the sound barrier, recall a scene from the 1950’s that never was. Every building, whether lodge, lift shack or maintenance shed is decorated in faux-Tyrol. Wooden gingerbread frosted with snow and hung with icicles.
The peak, perhaps a bit reminiscent of Bromley Mt. as it may have appeared in prehistoric times, sits at the highest point of a mountain pass. Terrain falls away on every side. The air is absolutely still and crystal clear. I sense a cold that promises to grow much deeper. There’s never another soul in sight, and I feel vulnerable and exposed. I rarely ever actually ski in these dreams, but my tools are always with me: long wooden, hand carved skis with no metal edges, beaten winter boots held in place by ancient bear trap bindings, coiled metal clamped around my heel, a leather strap for a toe piece. In actuality, this equipment from an earlier generation is what I used when first learning how to ski.
My love for skiing began when I slapped ash (and often the similarly spelled body part) to snow. As a native Vermonter, it is my birthright. My family didn’t ski, but the rides to exotic ski tows and using my Dad’s old skis did more than introduce me to the sport. Skiing remains a passion that has taken me from the back hills of my hometown to ski areas and backcountry all over North America. And sometimes, when I’m lucky, to a ski area that exists only in my dreams.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Ferd Thoma and His Enchanted Ski Shop
Once upon a time in Peru, VT there was an enchanted ski shop owned by a European immigrant named Ferdinand Thoma. Perhaps you have an image of Austrian alpine architecture and efficiency, maintained by a stately Tyrolean gentleman. Well, the reality was quite different, at least by the time I became acquainted with Ferd. He was a wizened old curmudgeon from Hungary, not Austria, and the Hillside Ski Shop was more the workshop of a mad scientist than an enclave of old world ambiance. Hillside was perhaps the area's first specialty ski shop, appropriately named as it clung to the steep hill beside Little and Big Bromley ski tows. The shop is long gone, but the building still stands, forlorn and forgotten, just west of the Sun Lodge on Route 11. Sixty years ago, however, the Hillside Ski Shop was a mecca for people seeking equipment, service and advice about the nascent sport of recreational skiing. Ferd was a brilliant purveyor of all three.
He was a friend and confidant of Fred Pabst, founder of Bromley and the man most responsible for developing the ski industry in southern Vermont. Fred and Ferd were, in many respects, Bromley's yin and yang, cut from very different cloth, but both necessary for creating the whole. In the decades of the 40's and 50's Bromley was one of eastern North America's signature resorts. Ferdinand Thoma represented alpine retail's cutting edge, offering the best equipment and fashion and the very latest in service technology, much of it of his own design. In a time when Bromley attracted a largely urban crowd, Ferd was dedicated to making the sport accessible to locals, as well, providing the necessary gear at generous discounts, or at no charge, to those most in need. This tradition continued to the very end. The Hillside Ski Shop enjoyed a business bonanza that only the select few, fortunate and insightful enough to ride the crest of a successful trend, can experience.
By the time I met Ferd in 1989 the shop was nearing the end of a long decline. I worked at the Hillside Ski Shop for two seasons. It was like being a curator at a skiing Smithsonian. Ancient Henke leather boots in boxes were stacked next to hand-made wooden skis from Austria in original plastic wrappers, while clothing styles from the early '70's hung on display racks, effectively marking the date of his last order. All of it waited for consumers who stopped coming to the shop a generation earlier. During my tenure our specialty was service. Ferd would work on anything. No ski was beyond repair, no binding spring beyond replacement, no boot beyond rebuilding. The tools we used would be more familiar to Dr. Frankenstein then they would be to Walter Wintersteiger, but they worked. I'd never seen anything like them before and never will again, but they were the extension of a man who wasted nothing (every wax scraping was reused until it evaporated) and fixed everything.
Stories about Ferdinand's incredible life created the undercurrent of my time at Hillside, punctuated by wild arguments between Ferd and family members in bombastic Hungarian, regardless of any innocent non combatants (re: customers) who may have wandered in. As his one constant companion, tethered by a paycheck, I heard them all, and all of them many times. The tales of his later life were colored with anti-communist paranoia which led me to question their veracity: Soviet agents desperately trying to locate and silence this staunch enemy of the Kremlin, for example. However, his personal trials during World War II are documented. As an executive for Standard Oil in Budapest he was confronted by none other than Adolph Eichmann, demanding the names of Jewish employees. Ferd replied he could have the names or he could have the oil, but he couldn't have both, because Standard's decimated infrastructure would be unable to supply the goods. The Nazi thirst for petroleum saved the day for scores of Hungarian Jews. When the Soviets invaded Hungary during the War's final stages, Ferd organized armed resistance, finally fleeing for his life by swimming the freezing waters of the Danube, trailed by Russian bullets. His dramatic escape on foot through hostile eastern Europe in the winter of 1944 is the stuff of legend.
The Hillside Ski Shop closed in 1992, followed by Ferd's passing three years later. Virtually nothing of Ferd Thoma and decades of Hillside history remains in Peru, only a headstone shared with his wife. I run into few people who remember the man or the business. My feelings for Ferdinand are conflicted. I certainly learned from him, though some of what I learned is filed in a HOW NOT TO folder. Undoubtedly, others have created such a folder after working for me. There is value in such lessons. My time with Ferd was fleeting and entirely framed within a working relationship, so there is much on which I don't feel qualified to comment. I can tell you Ferdinand Thoma was a man who deserved to be remembered. He was a successful businessman, a pioneer in the truest sense of the word, certainly a survivor and in many respects, a hero. He could also tell an amazing story.
He was a friend and confidant of Fred Pabst, founder of Bromley and the man most responsible for developing the ski industry in southern Vermont. Fred and Ferd were, in many respects, Bromley's yin and yang, cut from very different cloth, but both necessary for creating the whole. In the decades of the 40's and 50's Bromley was one of eastern North America's signature resorts. Ferdinand Thoma represented alpine retail's cutting edge, offering the best equipment and fashion and the very latest in service technology, much of it of his own design. In a time when Bromley attracted a largely urban crowd, Ferd was dedicated to making the sport accessible to locals, as well, providing the necessary gear at generous discounts, or at no charge, to those most in need. This tradition continued to the very end. The Hillside Ski Shop enjoyed a business bonanza that only the select few, fortunate and insightful enough to ride the crest of a successful trend, can experience.
By the time I met Ferd in 1989 the shop was nearing the end of a long decline. I worked at the Hillside Ski Shop for two seasons. It was like being a curator at a skiing Smithsonian. Ancient Henke leather boots in boxes were stacked next to hand-made wooden skis from Austria in original plastic wrappers, while clothing styles from the early '70's hung on display racks, effectively marking the date of his last order. All of it waited for consumers who stopped coming to the shop a generation earlier. During my tenure our specialty was service. Ferd would work on anything. No ski was beyond repair, no binding spring beyond replacement, no boot beyond rebuilding. The tools we used would be more familiar to Dr. Frankenstein then they would be to Walter Wintersteiger, but they worked. I'd never seen anything like them before and never will again, but they were the extension of a man who wasted nothing (every wax scraping was reused until it evaporated) and fixed everything.
Stories about Ferdinand's incredible life created the undercurrent of my time at Hillside, punctuated by wild arguments between Ferd and family members in bombastic Hungarian, regardless of any innocent non combatants (re: customers) who may have wandered in. As his one constant companion, tethered by a paycheck, I heard them all, and all of them many times. The tales of his later life were colored with anti-communist paranoia which led me to question their veracity: Soviet agents desperately trying to locate and silence this staunch enemy of the Kremlin, for example. However, his personal trials during World War II are documented. As an executive for Standard Oil in Budapest he was confronted by none other than Adolph Eichmann, demanding the names of Jewish employees. Ferd replied he could have the names or he could have the oil, but he couldn't have both, because Standard's decimated infrastructure would be unable to supply the goods. The Nazi thirst for petroleum saved the day for scores of Hungarian Jews. When the Soviets invaded Hungary during the War's final stages, Ferd organized armed resistance, finally fleeing for his life by swimming the freezing waters of the Danube, trailed by Russian bullets. His dramatic escape on foot through hostile eastern Europe in the winter of 1944 is the stuff of legend.
The Hillside Ski Shop closed in 1992, followed by Ferd's passing three years later. Virtually nothing of Ferd Thoma and decades of Hillside history remains in Peru, only a headstone shared with his wife. I run into few people who remember the man or the business. My feelings for Ferdinand are conflicted. I certainly learned from him, though some of what I learned is filed in a HOW NOT TO folder. Undoubtedly, others have created such a folder after working for me. There is value in such lessons. My time with Ferd was fleeting and entirely framed within a working relationship, so there is much on which I don't feel qualified to comment. I can tell you Ferdinand Thoma was a man who deserved to be remembered. He was a successful businessman, a pioneer in the truest sense of the word, certainly a survivor and in many respects, a hero. He could also tell an amazing story.
Friday, February 3, 2012
50 Years of Magic
This weekend faithful skiers, riders, shoers, sliders and other alpine enthusiasts will celebrate Magic Mountain's 50th anniversary. Folks will be costumed in early 1960's ski garb. A note here: any style five decades old must be considered a costume, even when rocked as everyday-wear. We see it all at Magic. Additionally, leather boots, bamboo poles and 210cm Head Standards will be the norm, as skiers dust off their Stem Christies. Don't knock the Stem Christie until you've tried to turn a 210cm Head Standard.
Saturday night a party to raise the ghosts of apres' skis past, will rage in the Magic base lodge, featuring a remarkable video, transferred from 8mm movie film, depicting the placement of lift towers by helicopter in 1961. I've heard, but haven't verified, this is one of the earliest uses of a helicopter crane in the ski industry. If true, another footnote to the remarkably innovative list of accomplishments of Magic's founder, Hans Thorner. These towers still march their way up Black Line, an enduring example of how the Thorner family continues to effect everyday life at Magic Mountain. For those of you who were alive and skiing 50 years ago the video is a time machine providing a peek at how we looked, skied and raced in the days before ski brakes and snowboards.
As the birthplace of lift served skiing Vermont has a host of resorts old enough to qualify for AARP benefits. In 2011 Bromley celebrated its 75th birthday. Stratton hit the big five-oh earlier this season. There are few places in North America where the roots of skiing are set deeper and alpine history more venerable and accessible than in the southern Greens. Like lift towers scaling Magic's cliffs, the best ideas of 50 years ago still work today. As for 210cm Head Standards, not so much.
Saturday night a party to raise the ghosts of apres' skis past, will rage in the Magic base lodge, featuring a remarkable video, transferred from 8mm movie film, depicting the placement of lift towers by helicopter in 1961. I've heard, but haven't verified, this is one of the earliest uses of a helicopter crane in the ski industry. If true, another footnote to the remarkably innovative list of accomplishments of Magic's founder, Hans Thorner. These towers still march their way up Black Line, an enduring example of how the Thorner family continues to effect everyday life at Magic Mountain. For those of you who were alive and skiing 50 years ago the video is a time machine providing a peek at how we looked, skied and raced in the days before ski brakes and snowboards.
As the birthplace of lift served skiing Vermont has a host of resorts old enough to qualify for AARP benefits. In 2011 Bromley celebrated its 75th birthday. Stratton hit the big five-oh earlier this season. There are few places in North America where the roots of skiing are set deeper and alpine history more venerable and accessible than in the southern Greens. Like lift towers scaling Magic's cliffs, the best ideas of 50 years ago still work today. As for 210cm Head Standards, not so much.
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