[Envisioned as the first chapter of the second section of the memoir of Cheryl & Al’s Early Days]
“Right. You can tell the year of your bus by its color.” The salesman at Marina VW took another drag on his cigarette and leaned against the green Volkswagen Microbus Westfalia Camper. He pounded on the door, which emitted with a hollow “thwang”, indicating its lack of interior insulation.
“So this is the ’78? Green? And that one over there, yellow…?”
“The last ’77 on the lot. Need to move it out, clear the floorage. I can let it go for, let’s see, $1500 less. But it doesn’t have cruise control.”
Seven thousand dollars. Cheryl and I could swing that with the savings we’d built up from our combined salaries. I checked the window sticker on the ’78 — $8769.
“Seven thousand. That’s what we’ve got, cash. That enough?
He looked at his watch. It was 7:45; closing time was 8 PM. The traffic on Lincoln had begun to thin, the evening breeze already calm. The first wisps of that night’s fog tickled my face, cooling the heat rising from my chest as I felt the enormity of the moment – I was buying my first car, my dream of a pop-up camper. I would be trading in my ’66 Dodge Charger, with it’s 402 cubic inch turbocharged engine, for the sluggish bus, unable to go over 55 mph in the mountains.
I quickly discovered the art of its stick shift, a two-foot-long vertical rod centered by my right foot into the floor. Waiting at a stop light on a hill required a delicate balance between the accelerator and the clutch to hold my ground. Despite the stamped directions for each gear visible on the black pebbly knob, I might find myself careening forward in 4th as slowing down in 2nd when entering a curve. Cheryl, who had been driving her own VW bug for 5 years laughed whenever I stalled or ground the gears.
“Haven’t you learned anything? Is this the way you operate in the OR?”
For the next seven months I commuted daily from the beach at Venice on the Santa Monica Freeway through downtown LA to Women’s Hospital, a 10-mile/45-minute nightmare of 6-lane chaos. I discovered the nuances of maneuvering into the feeder lanes to save thirty seconds. I suffered through the frustration of LA’s “surface streets”, shifting up and down every two minutes, the red lights rarely being synchronized.
Cheryl started her two-year midwifery program in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah, and I moved into a tool shed behind a friend’s house in Manhattan Beach. With my new job at Kaiser in West LA, no rent, and both of us without the expenses of our mutual social life, it took only four months to save enough for a down payment on a house Salt Lake’s “Avenues”. By the end of the year, I resigned my post at Kaiser.
But first, we paid a visit to my sister in Ketchum, Idaho. Cheryl flew down to help me pack up my meagre belongings. We’d already moved the bigger things, the tower speakers and waterbed, to Utah, so everything I owned fit into the spacious area behind the rear seat. We hadn’t lost our student frugality, so we thought nothing of driving al night through Nevada to cover the 900 miles without paying for a motel.
Leaving mid-morning to avoid LA’s gridlock, we cruised through a sunny Mojave Desert arriving in Las Vegas for an early dinner. On the way out of town, the sun went down.
“I’m a little cold”, Cheryl said. I flipped a lever in the middle of the dash all the way to the right.
Three minutes later, Cheryl unbuckled and headed towards the back. She fumbled around in my suitcase and returned with a blue nylon jacket, its down filling secured from drifting out by a strip of duct tape on the shoulder.
“Have you got the heat turned up all the way?” she asked after sitting down. “It’s still freezing in here.”
“Hey, that’s my down parka!” I whined.
“Haven’t you got your other one in the closet?” she asked.
I pulled off the deserted highway. I found the green car coat, a fleece watch cap, and oversized gloves inside the tiny door between the sink and rear seat.
“What about me?” Cheryl asked.
I reached over the seat and produced the stuff sack filled with the sleeping bag I’d sewn seven years earlier. “Try this.”
“You want me to get inside?”
“No, just open it up all the way, and lay it over your lap. Like the rug they use on a sleigh ride?”
I’d stuck a cheap thermometer in front of the vent window on the passenger side. I’d been avoiding looking at it, but Cheryl peeked. “It says ‘2’. Why’s it so cold in here? Doesn’t the heater work?”
I listened to the clatter of the engine, sputtering under the effort of climbing out of one of Nevada’s innumerable basins. It dawned on me.
“This is a rear engine, right?”
“So?”
“Well, the heat comes from the motor. It’s all the way back there. It runs under us, below the floor. Exposed to the cold air outside? It must lose a lot by the time it gets up here.”
“Great,” Cheryl sighed.
*******
A little after midnight, I knocked on the rickety door to Leigh’s trailer at the end of “Lefty’s Cabins” along the Wood River between Ketchum and the Warm Springs lift. Her dog yapped over the stereo playing vintage Rolling Stones – “Sympathy for The Devil”. An extension cord ran under the cracked storm door, leading to the hood of her car parked out front.
“Aren’t you guys freezing? she asked.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “How cold is it?”
She lifted her nose towards the thermometer hanging askew over the tiny porch. “It’s been getting down to minus 15. We have to heat the battery so it will start in the morning. Then everybody gets a jump…”
We dragged our gear inside. Rummaging through the pile, I uncovered two bottles of champagne. I brought them over to Leigh and asked, “Where should I put these?”
“Try and find a place for it in the fridge?”
I opened the narrow Kelvinator, and found it stuffed with leftovers from that evening’s party. “It’s pretty full in here,” I noted.
Leigh said, “How about the porch? They’ll stay cold outside, right?”
“Good idea!” I found a spot for them behind the random sports gear Leigh had stored out there.
Her little wood-burning stove, combined with the rattling wall heater and the energy of ten or so guests, was sufficient to let us remove our coats, and ease into the conversation. The party soon broke up, most people only hanging around to see Leigh’s famous brother the doctor, and Cheryl, Leigh’s sister from another mother.
We pulled out the sofa bed and snuggled under a thin comforter. The wood stove hissed for a half hour or so, then exhausted into embers.
“It’s like the camper in here,” I whispered.
“Let’s try the sleeping bag again,” Cheryl said.
Few storms make their way through central Idaho. Sunny days are followed by clear and frigid nights. The next morning, as Leigh fiddled with her stove trying to conjure up some coffee, I pulled on my jeans and down parka. Cheryl remained under the sleeping bag, her head covered with an oversized patterned wool hat she’d bought in Salt Lake.
“Are we going skiing?” I asked.
“Sure,” Leigh said. “We usually don’t get out there until after ten. No rush. Besides, who knows if the car will start?”
“Want me to go try?”
“Go ahead. But leave it running, it needs to warm up, re-charge the battery.”
I went to the van. Ice crystals covered the windows, appearing like a field of frozen snowflakes beginning to glisten from the morning light. I tried to open the door; it refused to budge. Thinking I’d locked it, I pushed the key into the hole. It was iced shut. I tried blowing into the mechanism and succeeded in getting the lock to move. The vinyl siding of the seat gave an ominous crack as I maneuvered behind the wheel. I stepped once on the gas pedal, pushed in the clutch, shifted to neutral, and turned the key. “Click”. Again… “Click.”
“Mine won’t start,” I told Leigh, returning to the relative warmth of her trailer. She handed me her keys, and I went outside. I lifted the hood, removed the battery warmer, then tried the starter. Instead of the usual quick growl from the starter engaging the motor, it slowly coughed but did build enough momentum to get the pistons turning over.
“Remember to leave it running!” Leigh shouted from inside.
*******
We spent the next two hours eating breakfast, gathering ski equipment and loading the van. Periodically, someone would come from one of the cabins nearby and ask if Leigh would jump their car. The trusty BMW played a big role in helping maintain the Ketchum ski economy that New Year’s Eve Day. Without Leigh’s neighbors living down by the river, half the stores in town would have been without workers.
Leigh had arranged the day off to ski with me. Cheryl, still recovering from the trauma of our drive in the heater-less van, volunteered to stay in the trailer, clean up, and keep the stove going. After hitting the River Run parking lot, we began the three-chairlift trip to the top. Leigh began accumulating acquaintances; she seemed to know everybody there. Several came with us down the impeccably groomed ridge of College, over to Flying Squirrel and up the Warm Springs lift. I found myself riding up with Jim, who worked for the cable TV company where my sister was secretary. He dug ditches for the cables. It being winter and all (with the ground frozen), there wasn’t much call for his services, so he spent most of his time skiing.
“So, you’re like a grave digger in paradise this time of year, huh?” I ventured.
Jim was skiing in overalls and a pea coat; his long blond pony-tailed hair hung out from his heavy watch cap. His eyes perpetually smiled behind glasses almost as thick as mine. His glowing face broke into an even bigger smile as he laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s right. All we do now is go around and unhook the boxes from the sets of people who won’t pay their bills. Hey, you got any matches?”
Jim smiled all the time because he was stoned all the time. Who wouldn’t be with the world wired like he had it? As I’d never tried skiing stoned before (and don’t smoke cigarettes), he had to show me all the tricks of lighting up and staying lit on a chair lift. I discovered the first problem was lighting the match; and the second was keeping it lit. Behind our four cupped hands, I tried igniting the joint from the match’s initial flare-up. All I got was a nose full of sulfur. Next I began working inside my parka only to become worried about the danger of self-immolation with that technique. I was getting desperate; Jim was still smiling benevolently. Then he drawled, “Hey, wait a minute; I’ve got a lighter in here somewhere.” He fumbled in his overall pockets and drew out a Cricket.
Warm Springs is a long lift, and by the time we hit the off ramp, I was totally loaded. I wasn’t sure my legs were still operational. I had some Raichle Red Boots, which weighed about ten pounds apiece, some off brand metal skis, and Look bindings. In that get-up, I felt like a life-size Bozo balloon doll; knock me down, my feet stay planted. Of course, that’s not what happens when your balance is disrupted on the slopes – most of the time your posterior hits the snow, and hands and feet reach for the sky. But it’s a good attitude to have while skiing, to think your feet will always stay below you, especially if you’ve been up all night, and have reached that state of muddled euphoria where your brain is having a tough time distinguishing between aural and visual sensory input.
Forgetting my sister and her friends, we took off down the slope. Upper Warm Springs starts with a gentle track down to tree-line, then reaches a short, steep well-moguled face and opens in a long evenly pitched trail 2000 vertical feet to the bottom of Warm Springs and Plaza lifts. When packed smooth, as it was this day, it is a cruiser’s paradise. The sun had been out for an hour or so, softening up the dry hard surface until it felt like the wet smoothness of a freshly Zamboni’ed ice rink. I was not yet capable of the elegant ski form my sister displayed after years skiing Baldy, and Jim was no better, but the sun, the snow, and the vaporous refreshment produced total enjoyment of what I was doing. For the first time I experienced a feeling of disconnection between my observing, calculating self, and the part of me that was skiing. The first two or three turns were tentative, but after I realised I could ski in this debilitated condition, I began to enjoy the run. Meanwhile, my thighs and lungs were getting a workout. Desperately, they tried to send messages upstairs, but the circuits were blocked. I was lost in the scene somewhere, and I wasn’t going to let little things like my shaking rubbery legs or the fiery dyspnea of my lungs impede my fun. Reaching the bottom, I skidded to a stop, landing on my butt. Jim was already in a similar position, leaning back against the post of a “Slow Skiing Area” sign, the radiant sun shine flushing him the skiers slide by.
“Whatcha doin’?” I asked.
“Look at these people!” he shouted, although I was only two feet away.
I looked. There was a rhythm up there; everyone swinging back and forth, taking one turn to the right for each to the left. Skiers of all abilities came down the hill in their own unique fashion, yet the scene had a coherent pattern. The whole hill was wired into one organic unit, each skier running on their own little track, like a subway or streetcar. Of course, every now and then, someone would jump their track, but they always got back up, maintaining the flow. As each person floated by me, the visual image preceded the muted scrape of skis against the snow, much like a jet passing overhead. I focused on the rhythmic swishing, the dopplered ebb and flow as someone passed by. The noontime sun blazed into my face, burning the scene into an abstraction of reality.
“Yeah,” I said.
*****
Our last trip down River Run, Leigh said, “We’ve got reservations for the Chart House tonight. They’ve got a New Year’s Eve special, fixed price at $25 for everything.”
“What time?”
“It’s for 8:30 – we want to stay up until midnight.”
“Great! Will they let us bring in the champagne I brought?”
As soon as Leigh parked by her trailer, Cheryl burst out of the door. “Uh, guys, there was a little accident.’”
Leigh pulled the skis off the rack, and asked, “What now?”
“I was reading, for my midwifery class, by the fire. Which was very warm, by the way. It was popping, crackling, making those crackling sounds. Then, I heard a loud one. Two, one after the other. But it didn’t come from the fire. I couldn’t figure it out. Then, when I came out here, after lunch, to walk down to the river.”
She held the screen door open and examined the porch. Next to the tennis rackets and cross-country skis, the champagne bottles each sported a frosty cap, a frothy mushroom of frozen foam bursting out. The wooden deck was pocked with flecks of a similar substance.
“What?” I said. “How does it do that? Alcohol’s not supposed to freeze at that temp, right? I mean, that’s what they have in thermometers, alcohol?”
“But champagne’s mostly water,” Leigh pointed out. “It freezes…”
“…expands, all that pressure from the carbonation…” I said
“And it explodes. I guess we can get some champagne at the restaurant.”
•••••••
Leigh’s current boyfriend, Curt K, arrived around six in his Jeep Wagoneer. Tall and lean, he sported tapered Levi’s, tan cowboy boots, and a wide-brimmed Stetson. But instead of a thick sheepskin fur-collared overcoat, he wore a thin dark-blue pea coat.
For the next two hours, we lounged around the stove, feeding small aspen logs whenever the flames began to die. I’d recovered from my ski day, and began to recount the epiphany I’d experienced at the bottom of Warm Springs.
“That may have been my best ski run yet…” I said. “All the way, top to bottom – I’ve never done that before. I was trying to keep up with Jim…”
“The cable guy?” Curt asked. He looked over at Leigh. “He’s a real dope-head. I don’t know how he can walk, much less ski.”
“The snow there had just been groomed – like a soft skating rink,” I said. “But everywhere else…the bumps…how do you ski here. Doesn’t it ever snow?”
“There’s a reason they call it Sun Valley,” Curt said.
As we stepped outside to pile into Curt’s Jeep for the one-mile trip into town, the thermometer read zero degrees.
“Why is it so warm?” I joked. The night before, we’d hit the minus teens.
Curt looked up. “No stars,” he said. “Clouds moved in, it’ll snow soon, I bet.”
The Wagoneer’s tires easily handled the compacted snow covering the roads, giving a little squeak with every turn. Curt pulled over at the north end of Main Street, and grumbled, “Why do the plows have to push the snow into the middle of the road? Takes away that parking strip.”
A sparkling mist hovered around the streetlamps. The light filtering down illuminated tiny shining crystals dancing slowly to the sidewalk. With each step, the trampled snow returned a high-pitched crunch.
I marveled, “Hear that? I’d forgotten what snow sounds like when it gets this cold.”
“I should have brought my warm coat,” Curt said as he pulled the flimsy collar of his pea up around his cheeks. “You know, Leigh, that sheepskin one you made me get?”
She grabbed his arm, leaning into his body and trying to keep up with his insistent stride. “No gloves either. Where do you think you are?”
We started out barhopping in downtown Ketchum. First a few beers at the Pioneer, cross the street and check out the Alpine, drop in next door for a serious Wild Turkey session at the Yacht Club, then outside for a bracing breath of frozen air, going all the way across the street to Slavey’s. In Ketchum, you can get drunk four times over and never walk more than 100 yards.
By 8 PM, we found ourselves at the restaurant. Seated in the table, our little party looked grown-up, local ski bums playing jet setters for a night. After announcing the courses for the evening, our server reminded us of the fixed price for donner, $25, and then offered us champagne.
“Why not,” Leigh said. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”
Soon, a silver cistern arrived, filled with ice and a green bottle topped by a cork held in place with a small wire basket. Leigh read the label. “Moet – it’s the real stuff.”
The server placed his napkin over the cork, and like a magician working hands unseen, twisted off the wire and eased the cork out of the bottle, ending with a satisfying “Snap” as the pressure released. Throwing the napkin over his forearm, he filled each of our flutes.
“To 1979!” someone toasted.
“Happy New Year,” we chorused back.
After the main course, Leigh pulled the bottle out, saying, “Empty. Should we get another?”
Hearing no complaints, Curt called the waiter over, and pointed at the silver cistern, the ice now floating in a tiny lake. Soon, fresh ice and a new bottle appeared. Once again, the six of us raised out glasses to the future. Before and after dessert, we repeated the ceremony twice more.
Sometime after ten, the server laid the bill down in front of Curt. As he reached for it, he asked, “We’re going to split this, right? Should be about $55-60 a couple.” I fumbled for my wallet, hoping to find three $20 bills there.
Leigh took the bill, and said, “What? Wha…I don’t get it.”
I snatched it from her. “Three hundred and forty-one dollars,” I read.
“What – that can’t be right,” Curt said.
Marina, who was an accountant in real life, grabbed the bill. “I thought the champagne was part of the dinner? Wasn’t the Champagne part of the dinner?”
“What do you mean,” Leigh said.
Marina pointed. “Here it is. ‘Moet. 4 bottles. $160.”
“What should we do,” someone asked. “Can we pay that. Do we have to pay that?”
Over the next few minutes, we travelled through the five stages of grief, landing on “Acceptance”. I contributed the last of my cash to the growing pile in the middle of the table.
“What about a tip? Do we have enough for a tip?” Curt asked.
“Does he deserve one? I mean shouldn’t he have told us the Champagne wasn’t part of the meal?”
In the end, we settled on 10%, and left the restaurant, chastened by our introduction to the high life.
Cheryl looked over her shoulder toward the summit of Baldy, where the snowcats and Thiokols were crisscrossing the slopes, their headlights careening wildly off the trees and across the moguls. An eerie sight, especially for one who’s been up all night, skied all day, then had six rounds of Wild Turkey.
“What’s that up there? she said.
“What?” asked Leigh, glancing down Main Street in the direction of Hailey. At least she was looking out for cars as we stood there in the middle of the road, leaning on the snow pushed into piles along the center line.
“Up there, those lights!”
Someone said, “My God, it’s true! The aliens have landed – they’re landing, and they’re disguised as snow-cats!”
“Come on, what’s going on up there?” Cheryl pleaded.
“Well, I said, the Chinese need to see, you know.”
My sister eyed me askance. She was used to my cockeyed, but logical stories to explain almost anything.
“Sure, the Chinese. One hundred thousand of ’em. They go up there every night to polish the moguls.”
“Polish the moguls?”
“Yeah. See, Sun Valley is famous for its bumps. They like to keep them shined, so they shine in the sun. Buff them up every night when it’s not snowing. The Chinese work cheap – they’re descendants of the guys who put the railroad up here.
“They work mostly on Limelight,” I continued. “They get the undersides really smooth. It makes for easier skiing.”
“OK, you’re so smart,” my sister smirked at me, “We’ll go up there and ski Limelight under the lift tomorrow. Then you’ll really see Chinese moguls.”
Imagine if you will an Idaho January thaw, with the Chinook winds coming in and warming up the slopes, sometimes bringing rain to make the bumps more slippery. Then the freeze comes, and the bumps turn into Chinese moguls, burnished hard and smooth on the underside, with frozen grapefruit-sized clumps of snow covering their uphill portion. You’ve skied them before, cursed them as you slid around them or rammed your skis into the irregular, unyielding upper surface. Well, now you know how they got that way. One hundred thousand Chinamen, out there at midnight, polishing up the bumps, just for your enjoyment.
