Aller, Rodney G.

MEMOIR

of

RODNEY GODDARD ALLER

Transcript of a taped interview.

Narrator: Rodney G. Aller

Tape: #63 A & B

Date: November 23, 1987

Place of interview: Mr.· Aller’s office in Lakeville, CT.

Interviewer: Jodie Stone.

Mr.Aller and his family have close ties to the Town of Salisbury his grandfather having come here in 1884 as pastor of the Salisbury Congregational Church. He speaks about Salisbury and Lakeville and the changes that have occurred over the years in these communities. His reminiscences include Hotchkiss, the Holley Block, Dufours, Mt. Riga, the inns, the railroad and the building of the ski jump.

1990

Property of the Oral History Project.

Salisbury ASSOCiation at Scoville Memorial Library.

Salisbury, CT 06068.

RODNEY G. ALLER 1

JS: This is Jodie Stone on the 23rd of November 1987, interviewing Rodney Goddard Aller in his office, Aller and Rout, at the corner of Farnum Road and Montgomery Street in Lakeville. Rod, when were you born?

RA: I was born October 24th, 1916, which makes me a little under seventy.

JS: Where?

RA: Phoenix, Arizona of all odd places, but the ties to Salisbury really antedate me by quite a bit, but not as much as some. A parent and a grandparent’s roots go well into Salisbury. My grandfather, who was John Calvin Goddard, really came from New London, graduated from Yale, class of 1873. He decided that the East was not for him, he’d go to Texas. He went to the little town of Lawrence and there he got involved in general merchandise business and he ran a small newspaper not far from Dallas and he also got into the real estate world. In the course of that, it took him with two of his associates in this venture into western Texas where they ran into a U.S. cavalry force, or, I believe, it was a fort, where they were told that there were a group of Comanche off the reservation who had taken scouts all over the area, and that they had no business if they wanted to keep bears (? – Ed.) in exploring that part of the world. They’d come a long way and they decided they were going to survey this land they wanted to buy anyway. So, they circumnavigated the fort, went back into the Comanche territory within a few days. Late one afternoon, Indian silhouettes appeared on the rise of the rolling country they were in. They pulled in the man from the chain who had been doing the surveying. Fairly soon there were not six Indian heads but sixteen and they thought that, come dark, this was probably their last night. My grandfather was reading his Bible and he felt that if this was his last night, he would be happier having done the Lord’s work which was probably why his father sent him to Yale in the first place. So, with that decision clearly in mind somehow they survived. The Indians decided it wasn’t worth the candle. They were able to get away from there. Although they were surrounded by Indian smoke flres in the morning, they kept in the low country and got out.

He subsequently sold his interest in Texas and the business and went back to seminary, where he was still in seminary when he married my grandmother who was Harriet Moran Allen, out of Rutland, Vermont. Their flrst child, stillborn in Chicago, much to her regret, was my mother, the oldest of eight. His first call, my grandfather’s to a church, was to the Salisbury Congregational· Church. So in 1884, he and my grandmother, with my mother as a baby in arms, moved to Salisbury. So that’s our first tie to the community. He then continued actively as the pastor of the Salisbury Congregational Church for forty (thirty-six – Ed.) years, I believe apprOximately. Then retired to become pastor emeritus and continued actively to live in Salisbury and from time to time fulfilled the role as the emeritus pastor for another forty (twenty-flve – Ed.) years. His wife, Harriet Allen, was considered somewhat frail when they first met and unsuitable to lead the life of a missionary which at that time he thought he might be. So she came to Salisbury and bore eight children and proceeded to lead a very vigorous life as did they all.

Those eight children walked to school. It was before the days of school busses and they lived on the corner of Lime Rock Road in Salisbury where our present Congregational parsonage is and they walked to theTaconic School, all six of those little Goddard girls, which was where the Wake Robin Inn is now located. So they had probably a two mile walk and the boys a three mile walk each way when they went to Hotchkiss which they both did.

Which brings me to an interesting tie that my grandfather made early on with Maria Hotchkiss. He was a friend of hers, who at that time was a widow who had inherited.i>a conSiderable wealth from her husband who had made a lot of money in the manufacture of a gun, particularly the Hotchkiss gun, well-known in the later part of the last century. She wanted to do something for her fellow man, particularly the youth of the world so it occurred to her that a library would be neede,d. My grandfather persuaded her that Hotchkiss really should be located in Salisbury Since Salisbury had a library. Therefore, Hotchkiss was located where he, I think, has a hand in the advising of her as to where it should be, where the view of the Salisbury hills is the best. It was

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set on what they call Town Hill. It was supposed to have been in the original layout the center of town. Two main roads crossed there. We know them as routes 41 and 112 (Interlaken Road). When I first went to Hotchkiss route 112 cut across the …. I guess it was the seventh hole of the golf course land …. right alongSide the cemetery. The original town cemetery (not the oldest – ED.) is still located there, of course. Route 41 went straight in front what is Bissell Hall. Those roads as you can see have been altered considerably. The cemetery makes me think of one of the splendid verses on one of the old stones there that I’ve always enjoyed. (It) went “Where I am now, you too shall be, prepare for death and follow me.” Last time I looked for it, I didn’t see it. A number of those stones have been turned over and should be set up. But in any case …..

Well, the other ties with the town… Well, I think of my grandmother being an Allen. and I always thought a Haas. She had to be out of Vermont, a relative of many Allen boys. Well, Ethan and his brothers were originally all from Litchfield County. Also Ethan was a resident of the Town of Salisbury, active in the iron industry. He was part owner of the forge at the end of the lower lake on Mt. Riga (incorrect: the forge was in Lakeville – ED.) I believe he left the community under something of a cloud because he was arrested at one point for brawling in public. bare-chested. He. in any event, left these parts and another Allen was brought to the Town of Salisbury out of Vermont. The other things that I think of as far as the highways are concerned in this town. besides the ones I’ve mentioned….. There used to be something like five different acceSs routes to Mt. Riga. Mt. Riga was sort of the economic center of town. It was where the major furnace was, at the outlet to the lower lake. They called it Forge Pond on Mt. Riga and so two of these roads are no longer in existence. One of them runs by the old Mt. Riga cemetery. It was called the Middle Road and ran past the Pettee farm. through the Pettee farm. It could also be reached by a second road that is now abandoned (that) went alongSide the reservoir, part of what’s called Reservoir Road. It came up from Ore Hill where a major mining operation took place. So you had that. thosl two, plus the existing road from Salisbury plus the one from Mt. Washington and the one from New York State.

The highways when I first came here were, a good many of them. unpaved. Not all. There was some paving but not enough. For instance, the route 112 from Hotchkiss School to Millerton became completely impassable in the spring of the year, although it was paved down to almost the Interlaken Inn. It was so deeply rutted that people would go around by way of Hotchkiss School and Lakeville to get to the Millerton railroad. Similarly. this rdad in front of the office here, Farnum Road was known as Muck Alley in the early days and you can imagine why. It had the Spurr Company which later became Community Service as the source of fuel and feed and lumber, so that it provided GQnsiderable traffic. But it was also on the main road to get to Falls Village by way of the old road, also now abandoned, that went from the Belter Farm over to Amesville. And, similarly, to get to the furnace in Lime Rock from any of the ore beds. such as the Davis Ore Bed and the ore beds further to the north of town, the shortest route was frequently to traverse this Farnum Road so it was a mire as you can imagine – unpaved and horsedrawn vehicles. The roads, as I understand it from my mother, were rarely plowed. They wanted the snow and ice to form a base for the sleighs, sledges and the sleds that were the normal transportation. So that it was not entirely an unmixed blessing to have the roads unpaved. They did make a better foundation than today’s paved highways do and, of course, there was no salting.

JS: Rod, what’s a sledge?

RA: The sledge was the heavy vehicle for carrying your charcoal or your ore.

JS: It wasn’t on runners?

RA: It was a runnered vehicle.

JS: It was runnered.

RA: A sledge, as I recall, was a heavily runnered wagon. Would be the wheeled counterpart for carrying your ore and your charcoal. My mother remembers what she called charcoal Wains. Wains were a large wagon and they were filled with charcoal and moved around the community to some extent. But usually because of the fact that they required much more charcoal. It was the only fuel they had available, no coal in this

RODNEY G. ALLER 3

area. The amount of charcoal that was needed outweighed the amount of iron ore, so that the charcoal was brought to the furnace from as near as you could get it. Of course the furnace had to be located where there was water power in order to run the bellows and the iron ore was brought to it wherever that was. Whether it was Lime Rock, the Barnum and Richardson Company there, the Amesville furnace or the furnace here in Lakeville, which was known as Furnace Village, as you know, Up the mountain the same way. They had a supply of charcoal originally on the mountain but they didn’t h~ve as much left around the lower section of town after it was cut off and developed.

I think of some of the things that have changed in the town. Certainly, the inns have changed. My own personal recollection of the inns goes back to the middle twenties when we stayed with the Percys at the Interlaken Inn. The Percys, John and Elizabeth, ?,ere Quaker, the grandfather of Jack Rogers, our former Salisbury Bank preSident. John Percy was not quite as strict in his observance as was Elizabeth. There was never, even after Prohibition was repealed, never any liquor served at Interlaken Inn. On the other hand, John Percy, who was a very amicable sort, if he took a liking to one of his guests, would invite him down to inspect the laundry. In fact, in back of the laundry machinery John kept a small bottle of the local apple jack or whatever was available. I was too young a boy to be invited in on these. But he was a remarkable innkeeper and a likable person.

The Farnum Tavern, of course, was revived as a tavern in the fifties and for-a while operated quite successfully in that respect, and is now been broken up into apartment houses and served its purposes well there. There was the Gateway Inn, which like the Interlaken was destroyed by fire. (correction – it was torn down. Ed.) The Gateway was never rebuilt, while the Interlaken, which burned soon after it changed hands, after the Percys sold it, was rebuilt as a more or less motel with inn facilities. As I mentioned earlier, the TaconiC School became the Wake Robin Inn and there was a tavern that I never saw as a tavern, known as Bushnell’s Tavern, at the_intersection of Salisbury and Mt. Riga Road and routes 41 and 44 as we know it now, Which for many years served as the home of the Warner family and is still used as a residence. But across the street from the White Hart Inn, which was a long-established and s~ccessful inn, is a little inn that may have even antedated it called the Maple Shade now known as the R~amont Inn. The Maple Shade was the first inn my father visited when he came here. It had to be before the turn of the century. At least it was around the time of the Spanish-American War. He and his father had ridden on bicycles from Long Island where they lived, something over a hundred miles. On the road to that day to have done this in a day and I understand that they did, was quit~. fLJl undertaking. But while they were staying at the Maple Shade a vocal lady. came down the stairs, thumping her newspaper in a great huff saying, “There’s been a hitch in the suspender” meaning a hitch in the surrender. By which we date the arrival of my father”ill Salisbury~-

Well, not long after that he and his Sisters spent a summer on the corner of Indian Mt. Road and Interlaken Road. The occasion of his meeting my mother was a dance that was held in the social hall of a building that was known as Roberts Hall. It was at the location of what is now a cafe restaurant in the village of Lakeville, Lakeville Cafe. This was a two or three story building the upper story of which, at least one was a large hall. This location was where my parents met, were married after my father’s graduation from Cornell in ’09. He, within a year, working for GE, came down with tuberculosis which was a death sentence in those days or nearly so. About all they could do for it was to get you into high, healthy, clear air and this is what they did. With the heip of my uncles a cabin was built near the lake on Mt. Riga and my parents moved up there without any sort of support other than such generosity as came their way and generosity was there. My mother’s diary speaks of people like the Ostranders coming by giving them gifts of fish that they had taken from the lake. Aunt Hattie, as we called Mrs. Donald T. Warner, would come up and leave them food and cakes, things of this nature. Kept them alive that summer, in any case, and it was a hard go for them.

But the things that have changed around the town. I think of not only the inns that have changed so substantially, buildings that are no longer here, that occupied the whole corner of the main section of town here. Dufours Garage, for instance, which

RODNEY G. ALLER 4

was a major livery stable, was turned into a garage, was located right on the sidewalk. There was no place where the car could be safely filled full of gas. That’s gone. The building next to that housed a telegraph station and a barbershop, Paul Argall’s barbershop. That’s gone. Below it was what was Carl Isaksen’s village, a little restaurant.

JS; He’s not the Carl Isaksen, who had something to do with the Undermountain Inn?

RA: He did. I first met Carl, and his English was quite broken, about 1932, worked at Hotchkiss. Got to be friendly with Carl, found out he was a Dane. He had been given a pair of skis that had been handm~de by one of the Satre brothers, of hickory, a beautifully made pair of what they called then racing skis and I’ve had racing skis. For seventeen dollars he sold me these racing skis. They were skis that lasted me all during the next two years at Hotchkiss and I still have one of them preserved as a keepsake.

But things that also have moved and gone lately were such landmarks as the railroad trestle which crossed over route 41 just in front of this office, vastly improved by the removal of the trestle. The Stuart Theater was the movie house which was across from the railroa,d station in Lakeville. It made a spectacular fire one night, not as spectacular as the Interlaken Inn fire. It was a beauty. Another thing that’s left the community were ice houses. Hotchkiss had a huge ice house down by the lake and most of the larger homes had ice houses. In the twenties, this was how people got their ice. You didn’t have a refrigerator and there wasn’t much in the way of local manufacturing of ice. Ice was cut and drawn to the ice houses in winter packed in sawdust. As kids, I can remember, without the knowledge of the rector of St. John’s (Mr. Chiera) we would occasionally sneak into this ice house, uncover a great chunk, chip off a little chip and suck on it like it was an ice cream cone, a particularly choice item.

Other things I remember as a child was getting a .recipe from a delightful old colored lady whose name I don’t remember. She was employed, I believe, by Miss Bessie Coffing who lived directly across from the Episcopal rectory and the Congregational Church. This little old lady gave us the reCipe so we proceeded to make elderberry wine, a forbidden thing in those days before repeal, but my grandfather turned a blind eye to what was going on in his cellar. We had conSiderable success with the wine until we deoided to transport it in the rumble seat of an old car to New York in September when school opened. Of course, the bottles would tend to explode. We arrived with about half the cargo and dripping a pail of elderberry all the way down.

Nevertheless, the people that I think of like Henry Chiera and on the other side of this Auntie Action, who was the salt of the earth sort of person. Would see a hungry boy, break ou,t the cookie jar, the jam she’s made or whatever else it was. If there was a pie in the back shelf. The sort of person that you love to have as a neighbor. Next to her w:~re the three sisters of Donald J. Warner who were slightly eccentric. They were the last in town to have running water put into the house. The last to have, of course, indoor plumbing. These were Aunt Del, Aunt Low and Aunt Grace. Odd enough so that you never knew which one was speaking to which one and which one wasn’t. So you couldn’t refer to the one to whom, this particular one you were addressing would not even recognize her existence. The odd thing was that from time to time, month to month, if not year to year, which one was being excluded from the conversation of the other – was always difficult to ascertain. But they were of interest.

I think of other things that changed in Lakeville, besides Dufour’s garage and the telegraph station and so forth> There was the Holley Block. The Holley Block was a large structure just to the west of the old bank building and opposite the Holly-Williams House. Holley Block was mostly apartments but on the lower section were stores including Doc Leverty’s. Doc Leverty was a Hotchkiss institution. The favorite-, occupatiOn of any boy who could get away from school for a bit on an afternoon was to go to the hill for “swill”. The swill was sodas and the sundaes that Doc Leverty and his assistant would put forth. Below Leverty’s store in that same Holley Block was a Chinese laundry. The Chinaman was particularly ihteresting in that he had a technique of spraying laundry by taking a large swig of water and pulling back the teeth and spraying through the spots between the teeth as he ironed the shirt. It was very effiCient, it got the shirt dampened and ironed all without his having to stop except for an

RODNEY G. ALLER 5

occasional swig. This stuck in memory.

Other things that changed besides the Holley Block was the beehive. The Beehive was another medium-sized dwelling house that was broken up into different apartments. This had to be the economical housing. To put it kindly, was the real slum of Lakeville, if it had a slum. It was a community unto its own. But so was Ore Hill and so was Factory Street in Salisbury. These communities have changed considerably in recent years.

I think of another institution, which was really not a Salisbury institution but served Salisbury, was known as Sam Parker’s. Sam Parker’s was a speakeasy, if you could call it such. More like a roadhouse. It was a modest structure, where. the so-called New Yorker Restaurant is located now immediately across the state line. Of course, being a church-going town, there was no alcohol available for the thirsty miner and he had to go to Millerton for his taste. Sam Parker’s was it. A local applejack was served. Also the Brick Block, which was at the railroad station in Millerton, was an old hotel where the smell of beer survived Prohibition, I’m sure never ceased during Prohibition to be served. It was unique place unto itself.

So was much of what they called The Oblong. If you recall The Oblong got its name, that section of New York State that adjoins Connecticut, in large part extending up to New York to the Massachusetts line. It came about through some issue of qll;estion about where the boundary should properly be. As a result an adjustment was made whereby the Oblong became part of New York and the southwestern corner of Connecticut which includes Greenwich and some other rather valuable real estate, became part of Connecticut. But this leads us to the location of, it was called Boston Corners. Boston Corners was a particularly good place for anybody seeking to dodge the law because the question was completely unanswered – what state had jurisdiction, what county had jurisdiction, what courts had jurisdiction, what officer of the law could serve process, so that if you were on the lam, an outlaw, looking for a safe place to go, Boston Corners was the logical place. And it was not too surprising that in 1883 Boston Corners was chosen as the site for a famous prize fight which was held between John Morrisey who defeated Yankee Sullivan in fifty-seven rounds, bareknuckled fighting. The rounds I’m told were shorter in those days. The picture here on the wall is illustrative of the crowd that it drew by train up from New York or wherever.

One could get to Millerton from anywhere where a railroad ran all through the country. The railroad ran in back of my grandfather’s house in Salisbury when I was a boy and you’d hear the steam whistles and the hissing, screeching stop as they filled the engines, and if it was a passenger a passenger train and there weren’t too many passenger trains in the twenties and thirties. They took on water there because it was th~ same spring that supplied the town horse trough on the corner of Mt. Riga Road in Salisbury and it was particularly choice water, and still lives on that reputation. Trains became more and more infrequent. They dwindled down to maybe two a day between Canaan and Millerton. (three a week between Canaan and Lakeville. Also the last passenger train to Lakeville was 1927 – Ed.) Ultimately, there was only a little selfoperated motor-driven car …. Sort of a “Budd” car it was called, I believe …. would go by my grandfather’s house. The railroad still provided an easy access for the itinerants, tramps you might say, to come through the town, which they did. They had their systems for marking the fence post of someone that was a fairly reliable target for a handout. Even though my grandfather’s salary as pastor with eight children to raise was not that extensive. He nevertheless carried the mark, because they invariably stopped. This is part of the pattern of the railroad.

I think of another time my grandfather had with the railroads which was through Dan Willard. Daniel Willard, who was president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He owned a farm where the so-called Salisbury Glen has recently been constructed. (now Lion’s Head – Ed.) He would arrive in his private car and my grandfather recalled with considerable pleasure being invited by Daniel Willard to go with him and other members of the University Club, – which was founded basically by the Stoeckel family in Norfolk – to take the private car, arrive at the University Club dinner in their suit and having nothing to do but enjoy one another’s company and

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the best of wines and cigars that Stoeckel was able to provide as well as Dan Willard. Unfortunately, those days are gone.

Other things that come to mind. Well, we mentioned to forge on Mt. Riga. A later partner in that operation whose name I forget …. But the story was told me by Judge Landon who practiced law in the little red building next to the Salisbury Congregational Church for many years …… the story was that this particular partner lived at a distance, would perhaps once a month come to Salisbury. His first time there, he went up to see the furnace and was entertained by the manager who lived in the little house that still stands on the corner there by the dam. I believe the name might have been Corbett. I may be wrong. In any case, when they arrived he happened to ….. It was his first visit. The second time he came to visit – the first visit thete had been whiskey on the table – no whiskey was produced for the second visit. When the man inquired, he was told that “in this house, whiskey is only served at a wedding or a funeral or when the minister comes to town”. Thereafter, once a month, like clockWork, this particular partner would pick up the minister and then arrive for dinner at the manager’s house.

Other things from Judge Landon, I wish I had made notes at the time, but he had a fabulous story about a divorce case that arose on Mt. Raggie among some Raggies. This happens to have been one that was taken by an attorney named Nickerson, out of Cornwall, who when he got to Litchfield County Court explained all the facts of the situation, the testimony was in, this judge had a little problem understanding. “Let’s get this straight. You say the plaintiffs name was Tessie Ostrander and the defendant is Frank Ostrander and the respondent she was Bessie Ostrander and the principal witness, he is Harry Ostrander.” This having been straightened out, the attorney, Nickerson, summing up his case to the judge said, “And furthermore, your honor, when a Raggie from Salisbury comes to this court and wants a divorce, all legal, by God, he ought to have it!”

Ostranders were among the last to keep a team of horses in the town. Dougie Ostrander, I think, was the last survivor. He had a heavy team of draft horses.

End of Side A

SideB

I mentioned having an interest in skiing, and I guess with Carl Isaksen’s help, that first pair of decent skis that I owned got me started. We built a little jump while I was at Hotchkiss on the ninth hole, and did some cross-country skiing and that was about it. In 1931, the Olympic tryouts were held in Salisbury on the ski jump then. Skiing in Salisbury had gotten its real impetus through the Satre brothers – the oldest one named John – had started jumping in Salisbury off the top of a little cabin. They went down a roof and jumped off onto some kind of a landing slope and then they took it from there to the point where they had about a forty meter hill built at the site of the present sixty meter jump. It was most impressive to see the quality of ski jumping that went on here in 1931. And it was dominated locally by the Satre brothers. But in the cross-country event Richie Parsons made the Olympic team from Salisbury. There were others that came along later on, of”course, like Roy Sherwood and so, forth. The Satres were it in the thirties. Both ’32 and ’36 Olympic teams had Ottar as one of the star jumpers. Olaf was one ofthe principal cross-country combined skiers.

Sadly, after the war was over, the jump had fallen into decay and a barbed wire fence had been stretched across the jump. At that point I was recently out of service and president of the Salisbury Winter Sports ASSOCiation and interested in jumping and was_ able to persuade the owner of the property not to put the barbed wire fence across thie ‘” landing hill. He let us fix the jump up, which was done and ultimately the little practice jumps as well as the main hill were put back in shape. It was a forty meter hill when we finished rebuilding it. This was done with the help of Pete Lorenzo and his bulldozer. He was able to get enough soil in that rocky ground together to build not only a proper knoll, but the takeoff itself was made out of earth, fixed with cribbing so it didn’t just erode away, and a small mound in the front of the tower at the top of the inrun so that the jumps that were held at the time were, oh, up to 170 feet but no more than that.

RODNEY G. ALLER 7

Subsequently, the thought was that we should qualify the jump for FIS competition and get a major designer of ski jumping hills into the picture, which was done, and the present form of the hill took its shape. It became a sixty meter hilL It didn’t attract as many of the younger jumpers as it might have, but it did attract some. And I think of George Miner and all of the Sherwood brothers, Stubby and Roy. Roy went on to make national team and national championship, and I think he was the first American to ever jump over a hundred meters. This was in Oberstorten, Germany. The jumps did contribute qUite a little to the winter scene in Salisbury.

JS: Talk a little bit about you and skiing, cause look at all those cups, my God!

RA: Well, if you’re interested in the ski career, it’s a little late in getting underway, although we…. We started a team at Princeton my freshman year. Princeton skiers in . that banana belt were not the greatest. But we would go to the Dartmouth Carnival, the intercollegiates that they had at Middlebury and at Lake Placid and we were never at the bottom of the heap, you know. Beat Brown, beat Yale, never beat Dartmouth, never beat Middlebury, but Yale, any of the other schools that had skiers. But we thoroughly enjoyed it.

I didn’t get back into competition until, oh, some time probably in the late fifties.Quite interested in what they call veteran skiing. Veteran skiing in those days began at age thirty-two, now it starts at age twenty-five. It’s broken down into a variety of age groups. In the East it’s about every eight years. For the national competition, for the international competition it’s about ~very five years. For the first time I think I won a national competition in my age group, this is in the Alpine events, slalom, giant sl~om, downhill, up at Waterville Valley in 1938 (?? – Ed.) and presenting the awards was Tony Madden. Tony was a Catamount skier, you know, head of the ski school for quite a few years up in Catamount near here. Tony had a fabulous story to tell about how he ran the headwall, schussed it by mistake. He didn’t know the course well enough to know that he was coming to the lip of the headwall and hadn’t planned to, but by the time he hit it there was no way he was going to make a turn and for the first time it was run straight and he took something like five minutes off the previous record for that particular course, near the top of Mt. Washington down to the Pinkham Notch he had taken, reduced his time by five, five minutes. But in any case that was the first of the national medals that I won. I guess there must be over twenty that I picked up since. Generally I didn’t go to the ones in the West. The ones that were held in the East were at Lake PlaCid, North Conway, places of that sort. Of late I’ve been going to the western ones and done fairly well in my age group. I thought for the first time last winter I’d try the European circuit and was able to persuade a daughter and granddaughter to come with me and we had races in Italy and Austria and Switzerland and Spain. I was able to pirk up the first place medals and/or cups in each of the countries. There were nine events over there, then there were four more in the international series that were held in the West. Two days of competition at Squaw Valley and two at Lake Tahoe and I won those as well. Those were followed by the national championships at Monmouth Mountain and the owner and originator, prime mover of the Monmouth Mountain ski area, man by the name of Dave McCoy. There’s a picture of Dave handing me the trophy after the combined event and it was of interest because he had a daughter who was on the national team, Penny. Just before the second run of the slalom McCoy had me by less than a second, she whispered a certain amount of encouragement to her father and he got off to a tremendous second run. I knew I had to do something out of the ordinary and I said, “Penny, you don’t suppose you could give me those same words of wisdom you gave your father?” She said, “No problem. Look Dad, just take it easy on the first three gates then turn ’em loose,give ’em hell, you can do it.”

JS: That’s nice, that’s nice. Rod would like me to add that the house that he now uses for his office was part of Dr. Knight’s Home for the Feebleminded and it was moved to the present site, he thinks, by Ma Dufour. This is the end.