Dad scooped me up in the snow shovel, bumped me over the rough and frozen shakes, and tossed me off the roof.

The snow had piled higher and higher that winter, until the view out our windows was completely occluded by a wall of blue veined snow. I landed softly in the pile and rolled happily over and down that tremendous drift of white. Big fun for a little guy!

It was 1952 and there was a record snowfall in Chester.

That was the first winter in our new house on Riverwood Drive. For the first few years in Chester we lived in one of the duplexes on the big lawn across from The Chateau, Collins Pine’s grandly named two story guest quarters.

As much as Dad knew about logging the woods, he was no carpenter. To build our new house, my parents hired Red and Alvin, the Granrude brothers. Red was tall and skinny with a bright shock of red hair. He wore white carpenter overalls and spoke in a high squeaky voice. His brother Alvin was shorter, darker, and always wore a brown fedora.

Where Red was voluble, Alvin was silent. I’ve no idea how many homes Red and Alvin put up in Chester, but they were always busy somewhere in our tiny town.

Young as I was, I watched closely as Red and Alvin worked on the the house. I studied the roll of fresh blueprints, smelling sharply of ammonia, spread across a pair of saw horses. They detailed a large, contemporary living room with a vaulted ceiling and an enormous flagstone fireplace. There were three large picture windows with built-in bookcases that ran beneath them. These were for my mother’s many books.

There were no screw guns or air tools on this job site. Everything was cut with a hand saw and nailed with a hammer. Materials came from Collins Pine’s local outlet, Builder’s Supply. The vaulted ceiling in the large living room was constructed from clear fir beams and tongue and groove pine from the mill, with walls of Philippine mahogany. There was plenty of room for Mom’s grand piano.

An oil burning furnace circulated hot water through pipes set into the concrete slab, so even on the coldest winter day, radiant heat rising from the floor made the house deliciously warm. The furnace lived in its own little room. If you opened the door to the furnace room and pushed in a red knob you could see, through the darkened glass port, the roaring furnace flames.

Peering in, I could vividly imagine the fires of hell that awaited those who lived a life of sin.

The house had been completed just before winter set in, but still lacked some finishing touches. The clatter of my new skis rang out sharply as I tested them on the cement floor of the unfinished living room. Too much snow that year to test them outside.

Snuggled down in my new bedroom, I could look out the window at night and see falling snow, shining in the headlight of an approaching snowplow. I’d listen as it came roaring by, oversized tire chains slapping the road bed, then fading off in the distance as darkness returned and sleep wrapped me in a warm embrace.

Winter offered no dispensation from being sent outside to play. After school, Mom bundled us up in snowsuits and out we went. Since we couldn’t get into the woods, we found things to do close to home. The snowplows left huge piles along the edge of our street, perfect for building snow forts. Sometimes a rotary plow came by, shearing the banks into vertical icy cliffs and making our forts unassailable.

And then there was skating. The Rock Pond was right at the end of the next street, and when it froze, at least before it was covered with snow, it provided days of energetic activity for the kids that lived nearby. When we were older, we’d go to the gravel pits, behind Rogers Airfield. This provided a memorable sight on a freezing winter’s night. Old tires were rolled out onto the ice, piled up and set aflame. These pillars of fire and roiling black smoke lit the surface well enough to skate and play our own brand of hockey. No one had a real hockey stick, so we made do with broken off tree limbs and pine cones or beer cans for a puck. The object was to bang the “puck” into the piles of smoking tires for a goal. Older kids paired off in the shadows under the trees at the edge of the ice and engage in forbidden activities. They generously provided the beer cans for use as pucks.

In the deep of winter, snowy berms in the middle of the streets divided the roadway as you make your way through downtown Chester.

There was an especially big berm piled between Ayoob’s Department Store and the Chester Theater. The theater occupied an army surplus Quonset hut and brought the glamour of Hollywood to our distant little town. Movies ran two or if they were big, three nights in the row. Going to the movies was a welcome diversion in the winter, but brought with it risks.

Stationed on the high berm of snow and armed with piles of pre-made snowballs, bad boys were lurking. While still immersed in the reverie of a Hollywood dream, patrons might find themselves pummeled, upon their departure, by a rain of snowballs. Shrieking with laughter, their arsenals depleted, the unknown assailants would at last disappear into the snowy darkness. Then it was safe to go home.

But the chief winter attraction for us was skiing. Before graduating to a hill, we started by clomping around in the backyard. My sister Jeanne demonstrates the technique.

Stover Mountain Ski Club leased a broad slope of nearby hillside from the Forest Service and cleared it. There was no Swiss built chairlift on Stover Mountain, but there was a rope tow that club members jury rigged together using an old truck engine for power. Empty car wheels, strung up on poles, served as idlers. In sort of a reverse tug-of-war, two groups of men had pulled the loose ends of a long hemp rope towards each other. As they huffed and puffed, a veteran woods worker/ski enthusiast, familiar with the arcane art of spicing a rope, joined them together. And there you had a rope tow loop.

Once you were big enough to push the clutch pedal down, you were expected to take your turn in the tow shack, watching for skiers that might fall down. When that happened, you jumped on the clutch pedal and held it down to stop the rope. When all was well, you had to let the clutch out slowly, or you’d jerk the skiers holding onto the rope right out of their skis. It was an acquired skill.

Share

Of course there was also a safety gate at the top, a length of wire stretched across the rope’s path and held fast by a clip. If your mittens or sweater got tangled in the twisting rope and you couldn’t let go, you’d break the wire before being dragged up into the idler and the tow would stop. Very high tech.

There was also a warming hut, with a smokey fire pit in the center that was always hung with wet and steaming ski garb. A family pass cost ten dollars for the season, a very reasonable deal. We even had a ski patrol with a tobaggan to rescue those who had trouble on the hill. For a time, every winter weekend was spent on the Stover slopes. We’d set bamboo poles in the snow to define a course and raced through them energetically, if not quite at Olympic level.

When the snow fell and the days grew short, our little town seemed so far away from the rest of the world. Dark green trees, covered in snow stretched endlessly in every direction. The lights of Chester offered the only illumination for miles and miles.

My mother played the organ at the Catholic church which stood right at the edge of town. As Christmas drew near, there would be choir practice on some evenings. I’d accompany my mom and contribute enthusiastically to the singing. Maybe a little too enthusiastically sometimes, so I’d end up sitting in the car, waiting for practice to finish.

Across the street from the church, a vast pasture, covered in snow, stretched all the way down to the dark shores of Lake Almanor. At the edge of the pasture, the old Olsen Barn stood silhouetted against a starlit sky. Sitting there alone, I could hear the choir’s lifted voices floating from the church, sweetly piercing the winter stillness.

“...above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.”

If ever it could be, in this moment, at that place, there was peace on earth.