By Scott Anthony Robinson

I’m not certain what his motivations were, but back in 1970 or so, when Dad remarried and brought three new kids into the family, he decided that we all needed to go skiing.

I was fourteen, Linda was too, little Mike was about ten I guess and one afternoon Dad came home from the thrift center with a car trunk full of old skis, poles and boots.

He summoned a few us out to see his prizes, ‘Look at the great stuff I got at St. Vinny’s!’ He hoisted a pair of beat up old skis from the hatch and balanced them on end. ‘Two bucks!’ he crowed, and he handed them to me.

I distinctly recall the metal edges with zillions of tiny screws holding them on to the ski. A few screws were missing, and the old cable bindings had rust on them.

The boots were lace up style that were so heavy and clunky as to make Frankenstein jealous.

I began to point out the ‘issues’ I saw, but Dad was nonplussed and he loaded us up with the gear to haul it all down to the workshop he’d set up in the laundry room. After a while I’d forgotten about the gear (it was still only October) and when we had an unusual, early snow Dad became scarce and disappeared into the laundry room for a whole Saturday, shouting, ‘Don’t come in here!’ through the hollow luan door.

Over dinner that night he told us to meet him in the rec-room downstairs, that he had a surprise, that ‘this is your lucky day’ and after we helped Mom with the dishes, we all came down to see the pool table covered with skis, poles, boots, mittens, hats and scarves. I thought the skis looked different, and we wondered if Dad had just put the old thrift store barrel staves in the dumpster and bought new ones, but no, this was our lucky day and Dad has simply ‘fixed them up.’

The smell of enamel paint, glue and melted wax permeated the room as we poured over the refurbished gear. Dad made sure we all got the skis and poles we were best suited to, and mine were a longish pair of fire engine red ones with shiny gray lines down the center. The red paint was still a little sticky, with my thumbprints etching into the edges. Linda’s skis were a pretty green color, with the same shiny gray strip and Mike’s were blue, again with the racing stripe down the middle. The poles were another matter however and because I was new to skiing, I did not know that the little baskets at the bottom, the size of a coffee can, were already considered vintage for 1970, having already been replaced by much smaller, sleek baskets on modern gear.

The baskets on my poles looked to be made of walrus ivory gusseted to the shaft with yak leather. And they were heavy. So heavy that I remember thinking, ‘Is aluminum supposed weigh this much? How did they put men on the moon with this stuff ?’

Dad beamed and explained that tomorrow we would be getting up early, that he had a discount on tickets to Ski Acres. To say that I was not particularly excited about this new endeavor would be mild. I had a fairly new ten speed bike and really cool BB gun that I’d barely broken the law with yet and now I had to go ‘skiing’?

But Dad seemed so exhilarated that I didn’t have the heart to cause much friction, so early the next morning we packed, ate some oatmeal and hot chocolate and hit the road.

Ski Acres, for the unaware, was the closest place you could go to pay money to put on ski gear and hurt yourself with a high speed crash into a tree, another skier or a lift chair pylon. Those were your choices then, as new skiers, and I managed over the course of that first season to nail each one, more than once.
Because it was the lowest elevation ski resort on the west coast, Ski Acres also was the best place to encounter what Northwestern snow sports enthusiasts call ‘Peanut Butter’ snow, which is a mix of slush, semi-frozen ice and chunks of rock that, after paying your cash you try to negotiate, sliding downhill in a sort of masochistic herky jerky, epileptic dance when you go from slick parts to gluey parts and back to slick until you reach the bottom where you cheerfully get on the lift and try it again.

Little Mike and Linda, being athletic, were already good at it by the first day, and I did not know that their first father was a ski instructor. It was best that I didn’t know since I didn’t need any additional discouragement.

The one saving aspect of my dislike of this new sport was watching Mom as Dad tried to teach her to ski too. She looked so cute trudging up to the first tow rope, all bundled up in fancy ski clothing, with Dad carrying her econo skis and helping her snap her little boots into the cables, handing her the ancient poles. I had thought my poles had oversize baskets on the bottom, but poor Mom’s poles had enormous baskets, with the shorter poles making them look like Frisbees.

Strapped into the stuff, she was forced to keep her skis close together just to avoid stepping on the giant discs wobbling from the pole bottoms.

Mom worked the bunny slope with determination, forcing her skis into a V-shaped snowplow down the slight incline over and over until, near the end of the afternoon she approached a group of tots at the bottom. These tykes were no more than two feet off the ground and most of them were better skiers than me. I was waiting to get on the next ski lift over and watched as a half-pint Jean Claude Killy careened down the hill above Mom and crashed right into her.

The pair tumbled to the snow, mostly unhurt, but Mom’s hat and googles were off and though I couldn’t hear what she said I’m fairly sure that it was a collection of not-nice words in low German. Dad showed up to help her to her feet and I never saw her on skis again.

After the end of our first Sunday at Ski Acres, I skidded back to the parking lot and when I went to take off my skis I noticed that they were coming apart. Long strands of gray stuff was hanging off of the edges, red flecks, showing like blood spatter on the snow, I had to look closely to see that the gray stuff was duct tape that Dad had cleverly applied over the now loosening red paint, a noble effort to ‘race up’ the old boards. Linda and Little Mikes skis were doing the same thing.

We teased him about it on the ride home, and the next year he kicked in with raises to our allowance so we could buy newer equipment.

Over the course of the next couple of seasons, Dad would push the skiing envelope to the hilt and ended up taking us from Idaho to Oregon and far east of Cascade mountains, sliding his Chrysler through a number of questionable winter mountain passes, ostensibly to indoctrinate his kids with a deep feel for the sport.

We skied Schweitzer Basin, Mission Ridge, Mt. Bachelor and the gluey hills of Hyak, Snoqualmie and Alpental and I hope he’s happy, because I love the sport. I’m still skiing every winter, only now I have somewhat nicer equipment and I don’t run into things quite as much.

Thanks Dad.