Alex

BOOK EXCERPT: LIFT OPERATIONS One day back in the late 1990s I watched a friend pull a long shard of glass from his eyeball. Oddly enough, this incident led me to consider a career in the film industry. The eyeball belonged to a guy we’ll call Lenny. He was my coworker at the ski resort. Lenny was a skater kid and snowboarder. Like me, he had poor eyesight. While I wore the smallest glasses possible, Lenny wore large black-rimmed nerd glasses with thick coke-bottle lenses. We were lift operators, colloquially known as “lifties”. Our job was to keep the lift running and make sure the skiers and snowboarders got on and off safely. The lift was a Yan fixed-grip double from the 80s. Yan built cheap—instead of shipping a bullwheel from a factory they’d fabricate it in the ski area parking lot. It saved money, but their lifts were prone to catastrophic failure. Over the years several people have died, and scores more have been injured on Yan lifts. So Lenny and I ran the Yan. The work was monotonous. We had a heated “lift shack” where we could warm up, but we were usually out in the cold, standing in the snow in sub-zero temperatures at high altitude. We had a few core duties. One was checking tickets. Ski bums were always trying to scam free rides and our job was to stop them. Another job was “bumping chairs”. Those old fixed-grip chairs moved fairly fast, so just before the skiers sat down we’d grab the chair and pause it for a fraction of a second to “bump” it. If the chair hit too hard the skier might wipe out and fall on the ramp, or they might not load correctly and fall off in the pit. My least favorite task was snow removal. We had to always maintain a perfect snow ramp for the skiers to take off from. If the ramp was too high or too low or too rutted then the skiers could fall while loading. Moving snow was an all-day thing. On the sunny warmer days the snow would melt and the chairs would be too high, so we’d have to add snow to the ramp. But on snowy days the snow would accumulate and we had to constantly remove it, or else the ramp would grow and the chair would be too low to the ground. So we’d be out there all day moving snow with shovels and rakes, and sometimes even picks and axes if it got too icy. It was hard work. Especially on big snow days when we could barely keep up with the accumulation. We had to move fast to avoid getting hit by the chair. Not only did getting hit hurt, but the chair would leave bruises or worse. So snow days were a little stressful. But we always had a boombox playing music, and guys like Lenny made for good company, so we tried to have fun with it. Despite the Yan quality control issues, accidents were rare. But there were a few funny incidents, like the time some guy got his tongue stuck to the chair. I assume the skier, by himself and without anyone to talk to on the long ride, got bored. So to keep himself entertained he decided to see if his tongue would really stick to cold metal. He licked the chair, his tongue got stuck, and he couldn’t exit at the top. Ski patrol poured hot coffee on his tongue. Freed, he quietly and meekly skied away—and probably never went skiing again. Incidents like the frozen tongue were welcome breaks from the monotony. Another distraction came when a production company used our resort as a movie location. They shot by my lift and stayed for several weeks. Both of my parents had worked in the industry but I’d never seen a real-life film production. It didn’t look that exciting, because watching a film crew shoot is like watching paint dry. But I was fascinated by the odd people doing strange things, like moving the grip gear around. They kept futzing with the stands, and giant pieces of fabric stretched across metal frames. They tweaked them until they were just right. Then they’d move everything and do it again. What were they doing? Now at the time I didn’t realize there was a difference, but this wasn’t high cinema. It was a low-budget TV movie for a kids’ cable channel. But it all looked so mysterious. And I couldn’t stop watching, especially when things were slow at the lift. Lots of people standing, doing nothing. Then all of a sudden everyone would get busy. It was so fucking strange. One day we had a huge overnight dump. There was three feet of fresh snow when Lenny and I arrived in the morning. Days like that sucked. Mainly because I had to work and couldn’t ski the fresh powder, but it also meant our day would be nothing but hard physical labor. First we had to shovel off the ramp, then we had to sweep the snow off every lift chair, and do it all before the lift opened to skiers. It was cold. The thermometer on the lift shack was hovering just below zero. The shoveling made us warm, but then we’d sweat, and the sweat would give us a chill and make us even colder than when we started. Again, those types of days sucked. After the lift was open to the public we’d move on to shoveling the pit. The pit is the area just in front of the ramp. Newer ski lifts are constructed so a snowcat can remove snow from the pit. But the Yan was an old lift, and the lift towers were too low for a snowcat to get underneath the line and scoop out the pit. So Lenny and I removed the snow the old-fashioned way—with backbreaking manual labor. On my first day, our grizzled old Vietnam vet foreman asked, “Do you know what a Mexican Backhoe is?” Braced for the racist joke, I rolled my eyes and flatly answered, “No. What’s a Mexican Backhoe?” He said, “It’s you,” and handed me a shovel. Turns out the joke was on me. The worst part about shoveling the pit was dodging moving lift chairs. They came right at face level, and you’d get whacked if you were in the way. During training the Nam vet foreman warned, “If you get hit it means you’re not moving fast enough.” Which really meant, it’s your own fucking fault kid. During my multi-year liftie career I wasn’t moving fast enough on two separate occasions. Both times I was concussed, and both times my scalp split open. Today I have two intersecting scars on the crown of my head that only me and my barber know about. While Lenny and I were shoveling and sweating and freezing and dodging scalp-eating chairs, the film crew was getting set up to do whatever it was they did. Then we saw a woman walking towards us. Blonde, beautiful, tight jeans. And, even though it was below zero, her jacket was unzipped to reveal a tight low-cut shirt containing her giant boobs. In her hands was a silver platter piled with something brown and red and green. She walked over to the edge of the pit. She pushed out the tray and leaned down towards me, providing a scenic view of the grand canyon of cleavage. She asked, “Would you care for a chocolate-covered strawberry?” I saw the berries and my jaw dropped. We’d been shoveling all day and I was hungry. Her boobs were big, but the berries were gigantic. Also, I was probably a bit malnourished because I wasn’t eating so well in those days. At just above minimum wage the job didn’t pay well. Things were cheaper in the 90s, but they weren’t free. My piece of shit van was paid for, but I had to cover rent and still had to swing car insurance and gas to get up the mountain every day. Then there was beer and my daily pack of Marlboro Reds. There wasn’t a lot left over for food, and most nights I’d eat ramen noodles. So in comparison to my normal diet, those strawberries looked fucking delicious. So yes stripper-hot blonde lady, I would care for a chocolate-covered strawberry. Later I realized that the tray wasn’t actually made of silver, it was just silver-colored plastic. I also realized that her boobs were fake, her blonde hair came from a bottle, and she was really trashy. But in the moment it all looked good to me, and that strawberry tasted great. Lenny and I took a break and watched as the craft service girl passed the silver tray to every cast and crew member. We silently stared as we slowly savored our giant berries. No words were spoken, but we did exchange a look that said “Dude, people bring them free food?” The next day, coming back from the Forest Service pit toilet we used as a restroom, one of the production assistants asked for a light. I lit his cigarette, and pulled out a Marlboro to join him. The PA was from Missouri. In his early twenties, just a little older than me. Tall and burly with a full face, he was just a nice corn-fed farm boy. I asked him how he liked working on the movie. He said he hated it. Said that this was his first and his last production. Said he’s getting out and going home the first chance he gets. I joked, “So they’re hiring?” “Probably,” he said, “but they’re a bunch of fake fucking faggots. You’d hate it man.” Interesting, I thought. Why was he so bitter? How bad could it be when a trashy slutty blonde brings you chocolate-covered strawberries? The film crew wrapped things up at the end of the week. We never saw them again and life at the ski resort returned to its usual monotony. A few days after the film crew departed there was another large overnight dump. And as usual Lenny and I went to work moving snow. I was smoothing the ramp while Lenny dug out the pit. I was chipping away at a stubborn hump right before the loading block when I heard a THUNK followed by a scream. Fuck! Lenny got tagged by a chair. I hit the stop button and ran to him. He was crouched in the pit, hands held tight to his face. I tried to get him to move his hands so I could see the damage. Blood was dripping on the snow, but he kept his hands in place. I got him to his feet and walked him back to the lift shack. I had to guide him because he wouldn’t move his hands and couldn’t see. We got to the shack and I demanded, “Bro, lemme see.” He pulled his hands from his face. His coke-bottle lenses were completely shattered. There were bleeding cuts on his face and his eyes were full of blood. I could see shards of glass poking up in several places. Blood was dripping off his face and onto the ramp. Then with one shaking hand he removed his smashed frames. And with his other hand he reached up, took his thumb and forefinger, and pinched his eye. That’s when he pulled the long shard of glass from his eyeball. He held the shard up in front of his face and blinked his eyes to clear the blood. He stared at it for a moment before his knees began to buckle. I grabbed him before he fell and eased him down gently. I knew from my first aid training that he was going into shock. Once he was seated with his back against the lift shack, I went inside and called for ski patrol. They took him to the resort clinic and then on to the hospital. No, he didn’t lose his eye. And he was back to work a few weeks later. But yeah, it was pretty fucking gnarly. After they took Lenny to the hospital, I had to work the lift by myself. In between loading customers I used a Pulaski to chip blood from the icy ramp. I figured that it’s not good for the tourists to see that sort of thing. Also, I took a lot of pride in that ramp, and I wanted to keep it clean. I’d cut out a hunk of frozen blood, replace it with fresh white snow, then repeat. The blood-soaked snow reminded me of the strawberries. And the strawberries reminded me of the trashy stripper-hot blonde and her bottomless cleavage. That in turn reminded me of the strawberries and the bloody snow which needed to be removed. Then I had another thought. It would take a few years before I was able to act on it, but this thought ultimately changed the trajectory of my life. I stared down at the bloody snow and thought, “Man, I’m in the wrong business.” (This is an excerpt from my new book A Capable Man and Other Stories, now available at Amazon dot com. Link in next post.)