I become Top of the Hill Tom

Tomasito at Mill Creek Lodge 2008. (Tanya photo)

I Become Top of the Hill Tom

Snow.

If there is anything more beautiful in nature than the first drifting snowflakes on an early winter morning in the high mountains, I really don’t know what it is––except maybe that perfect sunset at a perfect beach or that perfect rainbow hovering over a perfect waterfall or…

Well, you know what I mean. And the first snowflakes are awfully pretty!

We were making the final touches on the New Lassen ski lift—checking out the machinery and making sure all was safe and sound when the first flakes began to fall in what was to be a long, snowy winter.

We were cleaning up one of the foundation sites in the snow when Little Joe made another impression on me of just plain strength when he picked up a hand-powered cement mixer under one arm and two eighty-pound sacks of concrete under his other arm and carried them uphill for about 30 yards to a waiting pick-up truck. (This really happened.)

On our last morning as a working team, the big boss called us together in the Lassen Chalet parking lot and handed out the last pay envelopes––and he asked those of us who lived nearby if we wanted to work when the lift started operating.

I jumped at the chance to work for pay on the mountain and he hired me to be the “Safety-man” who would sit in a heated glass booth at the top of the lift to make sure the skiers exited the lift and skied away safely.

My job was to push a STOP button which would stop the lift if there was any problem at the top.

This also meant I would be first person up the lift every morning to visually check the shiv trains to make sure they were operational, to sculpt the snow exit ramp for sliding off the lift and other chores and I would be the last one to ride the lift down every evening—unless I wanted to ski down with the ski patrol who checked to make sure no one was left on the mountain after the lift closed.

In just a few week there was enough snow to open so in November of 1982 (I think it was!) I started working full time on the Brand New Lassen Ski Lift and I had never been on skis in my life!

Tomasito, 2008

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