Page 14 | THE LAKER | November, 2020
Yester year
Making Merry in the Winter Season By Kathi Caldwell-Hopper “Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.” -Anamika Mishra
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UST ARRIVED! Remembrances by our grandparents and older relatives make it clear they sure knew how to handle winter by enjoying simpler pleasures like ice skating and bonfires and snowshoeing, to name but a few winter activities. Looking back over the years, before television and computers, it surely seems people embraced the great outdoors in New Hampshire, where the snow is deep and the ponds and lakes are ice covered. Snowmobiling is one of the most popular of winter sports; snowmobilers watch the skies and check weather forecasts come December for signs of snow. A thick blanket of white means hours of riding through wooded trails, and comradery at snowmobile clubs. But long before today’s snowmobiles, getting around was problematic in the winter, especially for country doctors who might need to battle a storm to reach a remote farm to deliver a baby or tend a sick child. The advent of the snowmobile solved that problem, and
Skiing at Gunstock 1960s. Photo courtesy Gunstock. led to today’s pastime of snowmobiling for fun. Virgil D. White was a forwardthinking man. The Ossipee-area resident come up with the idea of attaching skis to the bottom of a car in order to make it easier to drive on snow and ice. He certainly had a unique idea when he dreamed up the first snow
machine in 1917. White, who had for a time worked as a logger, got a patent in 1917 for an attachment to convert a standard Model T into a “snowmobile.” He also was the first person to use the term snowmobile and he had the name copyrighted, a smart move on his part. White was a local Ford dealer, and
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likely had to deal with the difficulty of auto travel in snowy NH. Perhaps, as he drove on local roads in a snowstorm, he thought how much easier it would be if the car had skis. Although we don’t know exactly how White came up with the snowmobile idea, it led to the snow machines so popular today. Because he worked for Ford, Mr. White sold the snow attachments through the car company. By 1922, the attachment offered was a package that could turn a Ford automobile into a “reliable snow machine” according to information in an article titled “A brief history of the Model T Ford Snowmobile” at www. modeltfordsnowmobile.com. The package included skis made from metal and wood that were placed on the front of the car. Heavy-duty tracks could be added to the rear tires for more traction and the wheels also were heavy duty. White seems to have been quite the innovator and inventor, always tweaking his product. At some point he switched to all metal tracks made of stamped steel shoes held on by chain links. Later additions included a box attached to part of the frame for the • Yesteryear Continued on page 15
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