Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
The summer didn't pass uneventfully, I just don't remember the sequence of events, that's all! I had acquired a minimal grasp of the fundamentals of skiiing by this time but in all honesty I must say that I was still very much the novice. Even though professional skiiers are subject to injuries, they are fairly infrequent when compared to the amount of time they spend on the slopes.
Sad to say, most of the serious leg injuries are suffered by 'super novices' if I may coin a term. Some of the fractured ankles and spiral fractures of the tibia are, believe it or not, suffered by young 'snow bunnies' who never actually make it as far as the ski slopes but fall in an awkward and up-tight manner en route to the ski lift. Alexander Pope said 'A little learning is a dangerous thing,...' and that admonition applied perfectly to me. I had reached just far enough in my ski education to think I knew what I was doing. When Dave suggested a ski holiday in Sun Valley I was willing and eager.
We made it as far as North Fork the first day, stayed the night at a roadside motel and cruised into Sun Valley the next day around noon. We checked into the Lodge and were assigned to a large two-storey building next door to the main lodge. Since it was still early we got rigged up and went out to the ski slopes. We should have been alerted by the fact that T-bars were in service leading up to the crests of the hills facing the main lodge. We spent the rest of the afternoon skiing on what we later referred to as 'baby slopes' and remarked on several occasions that Sun Valley was a disappointment from the standpoint of mountains.
Later that evening we went to the ball room where Eddie Duchin's son had a small dance band. It was more of an 'apres-ski' ambience and we sat at a small table with three or four other residents.
'Where were you guys skiiing?' asked one of the fellows sitting at the table.
'Out there in front of the lodge,' Dave said. 'We were under the impression that there were mountains here, but these are no more than medium-sized hills!'
'You mean nobody told you about the mountains?' he said.
'Mountains?' Dave said, 'where the hell are the mountains?' His informant smiled slightly, not sure whether or not his leg was being pulled. 'Well, if you're really serious, there's a bus leaving for the mountain several times an hour in the morning. If you go up there I think you'll get all the mountain you want!' The next morning we boarded a bus about 9:30 and rode for ten or fifteen minutes to where the real action was. We rode the first chairlift to a transfer station and then boarded a second chairlift to the top of the mountain. The top of the slope was machine groomed and deceptively innocuous for the first several hundred yards. I skiied there for my first several runs and confirmed the fact that I was definitely in control. There was another run down through the trees that I felt I should use after mastering the first slope I tried.
Unfortunately there was less room on that run and I was unable to make the long gradual turns I had made on the first slope. The result was that I developed a considerably higher velocity than before; I don't think I was out of control--yet! If there hadn't been an instructor with a class of four or five cuties standing on one side of the slope I might have made it! I felt rather heroic passing these gorgeous neophytes at high speed and felt compelled to turn my head toward them to make sure they were suitably impressed. That was a mistake!
We were not using the 'long thongs' popular with professionals and European racers at the time, but we had a form of binding (I think we referred to them as ('suicide straps') that held our boots quite close to the skis. When my ski tips crossed I didn't fall sideways but went straight forward over the skis. It was a unique sensation to feel the muscles in the back of my right hamstring stretch out until they could stretch no further, then gradually tear apart as I continued my face-down fall.
I don't recall being particularly embarrassed at having wiped out at the peak of my skillful demonstration; I was too preoccupied with my painful after effects. I gathered that the unintentional witnesses of my skill display were not too impressed either! They left as soon as I wiped out! The ski patrol arrived in remarkably short time and began to secure my left ankle as though it had been broken.
'I don't think there's anyhing wrong with my left ankle.' I said to the head man, 'it's my right leg that causes me pain!'
'We'll secure it just in case,' he replied matter of factly. When they had me properly bundled up they transfered me to a toboggan that had arrived and we began the long trip down. The toboggan had two long poles projecting from its front end which were held under the arms of a skilled skiier who used a snowplow technique on the steep sections of the slope. For insurance two more ski patrol members held ropes extending from the back of the toboggan. I realized that I was a member of an exclusive group of skiers whom had ridden the chairlift up but not down. Dave had gone off on his own sometime previously and was completely oblivious of my adventures.
'You have a bimallealar avulsion of the left ankle, so I've had to put a walking cast on it,' the doctor said. 'Stay off it for twenty-four hours till it hardens up. You should probably keep it on for about five or six weeks; check with your doctor when you get home.'
'Thanks,' I said, 'What about my hamstrings?'
'They've been badly torn,' he said, ' you better come in tomorrow and let me look at your leg; we may have to operate and tie off some blood vessels. Failing that, you should have the heat lamp on it every day for a couple of weeks until the swelling goes down.'
'Oh, goody!' I said. I ignored the heat lamp instruction and had a lump of scar tissue at the back of my leg for several years to come.
Later I heard the familiar voice of Dave coming down the hall so I started to moan and thrash around on the bed as though in extreme agony. Dave came into the room and up to my bed as I continued my mischievous behaviour.
'Where does it hurt?' he asked anxiously. I immediately stopped my thrashing about, opened my eyes, smiled broadly and said 'Oh, hi Dave! what's new?'
'You crazy bastard, you scared hell out of me!' he said, obviously relieved.
The next day I was fitted out with crutches and Dave came by and picked me up. I watched my right hamstring as it gradually grew larger and took on a grape-like appearance. Eventually it reminded me of the cotton sacks my mother used to suspend on a hockey stick between two chair backs when she was making grape jelly. It was a dark purple and did everything but drip.
The housing arrangements were as close to 'co-ed' as possible; the women were housed on the bottom floor of the building and the male residents on the second floor. There was a sort of unspoken regulation prohibiting intermingling but there were no 'housemother' or security guards around and no strict 'Verboten' signs prominently posted. One of the aspiring comedians on our floor made a habit of walking into the women's lavatory, ostensibly by mistake, but having a good look around before apologizing profusely for his 'mistake'. There were scantily-clad women in every mode, brushing their teeth, applying their make-up or trapped embarrassingly on the crapper. You ask me whether there were doors on the toilet cubicles in the women's washroom and I say 'I don't know, I was never in the women's washroom!'
One of the other fellows in our dormitory section, Martin by name, was an unhappy crutch-ridden man from Minneapolis who was a partner with his father in a dental surgery practice. He was afraid to phone home and inform them of his condition.
'Both of my parents pleaded with me to cancel when I told them I was planning a ski trip to Sun Valley. 'Much too risky for someone in your profession!' my father said. My mother was quite hysterical about the subject,' Martin said. He made the trip anyway and ended up with a compound spiral fracture and a non-walking cast.
'How long are you going to have to keep the crutches?' I asked.
'They tell me it'll be at least six to eight weeks before I'll be able to put my full weight on it; even then there's no telling how long I'll be able to stand.'
'That's lovely,' I said, 'just fucking lovely!'
'Yeah, I know' Martin said gloomily.
One of the girls we had met was the daughter of a wealthy power lawn mower
manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. She claimed that her brother was a star lineman on one of the northwest university football teams. I found it believable because although exceedingly attractive she was built somewhat along the same lines. This was confirmed one cold night when, for some obscure reason, I talked her into having a bit of a drive around the resort area. After wrestling with her for the better part of an hour I conceded that she was too strong for me and terminated the bout. We remained good friends and the 'Assault at Arms' was relegated to 'just one those things!' No harm done! She had obviously not been embittered by our late night scuffling because Dave showed up the next night with a plate loaded with all the goodies from the evening dinner table.
'It's from your husky girlfriend,' he said. 'She says she's on a diet and since it's already been paid for it would be a shame to see it go to waste.' There were croquette potatoes, fried chicken and apple pie which I devoured without a twinge of guilt. For the remainder of our stay I enjoyed delicious evening fare at no expense, not to mention the pleasant visits from my girlfriend when she visited to enquire after after my health.
Toward the end of the week I cast my crutches aside and ventured to include dancing in my repertoire of social capabilites and found that I could rotate quite effectively on my walking cast. When I sobered up the next day the pain was substantial.
One night a group of us went over to Ketchum, a town a few miles from the Lodge, later famous as the place where the great Ernest Hemingway removed the top of his head with a shotgun blast. There was a gambling establishment there and it was strange to go into an expensively furnished casino with roulette wheels, slot machines, crap tables and blackjack stations but no players. There were half a dozen employees standing around in tuxedos twiddling their thumbs. Our party of five or six visited a crap table for about half an hour before we left our measly losses and departed the premises. Dave claims that I put a dollar in a slot machine as we left and hit a large jackpot but I have no recollection of that. Easy come, easy go!
One day Dave and I were standing in the lobby watching the visitors go by when a couple of blondes approached .
'Good day!' Dave said, bowing slightly at the waist as the women passed. They looked us up and down then smiled brightly, said 'Hello boys!' and walked on past.
'Who the hell were they?' I said, 'do you know them?'
'Didn't you recognize them?' Dave said with a smile.
'No! Should I have?' I asked, bewildered.
'It was Joan Blondell and that other babe, you know, the one that was married to Dick Powell,'
'Oh, you mean June "what's-her-name"!'
'Yeah, that's it! June 'whats-her- name'!' (It was June Allyson!)
'I didn't recognize them at all, they're so damn small; they're only a bit larger than midgets!'
'Hollywood likes 'em small!'
'So it seems!'
My hamstrings never began to hurt until we started on the way back to Calgary; sitting in the car seemed to have an absolutely negative affect on them. By the time we reached our stopping place for the night I was suffering considerable pain. Dave volunteered to make a trip to a local pharmacy to get some pain killer.
'I don't think you'll get anything effective without a prescription,' I said.
'Won't know until I try!' he said as he left the room. To my surprise he was back within a half hour with a small vial of Seconal. I went out like a light within seconds of taking one pill. My wife argues that Seconal is a sleeping pill and not a pain killer! My response is that you can't feel any pain if you're unconscious. Go figger!
My mother was not pleased when I clattered through the back door on crutches but I soon convinced her that slightly wounded was better than slightly dead!
— The End —