Felix Carroll: The wondrous, benevolent nation known as Paddy Wagon
This article first appeared in The Berkshire Eagle.
By Felix Carroll
GREAT BARRINGTON — Since high culture cannot be the top priority, he must share this space with a panel marked "High Voltage." Its attendant knobs, fuses and switches take up room that, one could argue, might be put to better use for coffee cups, CDs and words to live by. But it's a balancing act here in this 24-square-foot stucco hut, isn't it?
The Jim Jarmusch-quoting flower farmer who stewards this puny plug of real estate in the cold months blows warm air into his cold hands. It's 7 a.m. on a dim and chilly Saturday at Ski Butternut. From all points on the compass, sleepy-eyed skiers are stuffed into SUVs right now and closing in. Here at the hut, the daily setup rituals have begun, starting with the hanging of a Norwegian flag in honor of a man named Einar Aas and setting out a portable stereo upon a makeshift shelf suspended by shoestrings.
He presses play. An accordion sighs. A Frenchman sings, presumably of love, longing and leaving.
If, as they say, a ski resort is a world unto itself, step this way to the wondrous, benevolent nation known as Paddy Wagon, the beginner chairlift at the bunny hop. This is where one Will Ketchum has served as operator, impresario, educator, DJ, philosopher and object of affection for 14 years.
Paddy Wagon, the lift, is an Italian-manufactured number installed half a century ago. It consists of a series of 24 chairs that whip stiffly around a bull wheel at seven-second intervals, scooping up skiers and snowboarders by the rump and depositing them a few hundred feet up the far end of a gentle incline.
Paddy Wagon, the nation, conducts its most pressing affairs at the return terminal, beside the hut and beneath that bull wheel, which spins suspended from a hinged parallelogram of steel girders. When it's running, that wheel and those steel girders rock and rattle like a clothes dryer chomping at a wet pair of work boots.
But not so loud that you can't hear a Frenchman's heart break.
"It loves to run and run and run," says maintenance man Paul Domotor, who gives Paddy Wagon its morning dose of loving in the form of adjustments made with a giant iron wrench straight out of the Flintstones. "It loves to run, just like Will loves to run and run and run."
Paddy Wagon, the nation, has as its primary role teaching skiers how to ride a chairlift and how to feel good about themselves in the process. This falls upon Ketchum, 69, a man with a cow-catcher mustache and blessed with the exceptional grace of being comfortable in his own skin.
He owns no phone. In summers, he sleeps with his flowers in a field in Stockbridge. In winter, he sometimes visits those fields because, devoid of color, it's like visiting the netherworld.
The fresh coffee he perpetually has on hand he decants from a dented thermos that resembles a chunk of space debris. He keeps tiny ceramic coffee cups warm upon the hut's space heater.
"You want coffee?" he says.
Chalk marked on the hut's inside doorway like an Epiphany house blessing are the Spanish words, "Eres el major," which means "You are the best." That was the parting note to Ketchum from a Peruvian student who worked Paddy Wagon with him for a couple of seasons.
"He's probably the only lift operator around here who gets cards and letters to the main office from skiers who have had such a great experience here because of him," Domotor says.
This is no wonder. The day before, Ketchum spied Kristy Mills and her young daughter, Sawyer, from Stamford, Conn., in line for Paddy Wagon. Having previously learned to his delight that Sawyer was named for "Tom Sawyer," Ketchum was prepared.
"Wait!" he told them, and pulled them out of the line.
He disappeared into the hut and reappeared with a favorite quote he had printed and prepared for Sawyer from "Huckleberry Finn." He crouched down and read the quote to her: " for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others."
"See," he told Sawyer, "every moment of life we're on a raft. When you're on the chairlift, you're on a raft. When you're driving home with your mom, you're on a raft. Get that right, and you get an A-plus."
He folded the paper and stuffed it into Sawyer's coat and hurried back to the lift, to the next wobbly set of skiers.
Amid orphaned goggles and gloves, he keeps a full-bodied miniature cutout of Kurt Vonnegut in the hut.
"I remember one year, a drought year, I woke up and read this article by him in Harper's where he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope, and she says, `You know, you have money now. Why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?'
"But he explains to her how he's going to have a great time in the process of going out and buying one envelope. The moral of the story is `We're here on Earth to fart around' — that `We're dancing animals.' I read that, and it made me feel like I wasn't a crazy person."
A GE kid raised on a farm on the Richmond-Pittsfield line, Ketchum learned to ski at Bousquet Mountain — "a brown bag ski area, GE kids coming at 5 o'clock and beating it up," he says. "Oh, I love to ski. It's beautiful. It's like, you know, you can't fly, but you can ski. We see birds and animals moving much faster than we do, and skiing allows us to be like them."
He worked the lifts at Bousquet for 25 years, but couldn't bear to watch as the hill got blinged out with luxury townhouses. He signed on at Butternut in 2004, joining with one of his heroes, the late ski instructor Einar Aas of Norway. An elegant skier, an aficionado of crappy red wine, Aas was fond of telling students, "You looked very graceful as you fell on your face."
And legend has it that it was Aas who named Paddy Wagon — to highlight its prime clientele, newbie-skiers on drunkard legs.
"The best thing he ever said to me, and I'll never forget, was `You're a people person,'" Ketchum says. "It made me feel so good, you know? I'm really not, but in this job right here, it seems to bring it out."
It's coming upon 8 a.m. Ketchum flicks the switches and Paddy Wagon groans to life. A rendition of "Hey Jude" on steel drums blares from the boombox.
A young boy in a blue coat steps up to the gate and hesitates. Ketchum walks up, greets him and takes him by the hand. "Ready, steady, walk," he says, escorting the boy to the red line as chair No. 12 comes bearing down upon them both.
"It's OK," Ketchum says. "Turn to your right and grab it, grab it hard and lean back, lean back."
Ketchum flips the safety bar down and steps out of the path like a bullfighter.
The boy is packaged and gone. Another special delivery from the beating heart of Butternut.
The Jim Jarmusch-quoting flower farmer who stewards this puny plug of real estate in the cold months blows warm air into his cold hands. It's 7 a.m. on a dim and chilly Saturday at Ski Butternut. From all points on the compass, sleepy-eyed skiers are stuffed into SUVs right now and closing in. Here at the hut, the daily setup rituals have begun, starting with the hanging of a Norwegian flag in honor of a man named Einar Aas and setting out a portable stereo upon a makeshift shelf suspended by shoestrings.
He presses play. An accordion sighs. A Frenchman sings, presumably of love, longing and leaving.
If, as they say, a ski resort is a world unto itself, step this way to the wondrous, benevolent nation known as Paddy Wagon, the beginner chairlift at the bunny hop. This is where one Will Ketchum has served as operator, impresario, educator, DJ, philosopher and object of affection for 14 years.
Paddy Wagon, the lift, is an Italian-manufactured number installed half a century ago. It consists of a series of 24 chairs that whip stiffly around a bull wheel at seven-second intervals, scooping up skiers and snowboarders by the rump and depositing them a few hundred feet up the far end of a gentle incline.
Paddy Wagon, the nation, conducts its most pressing affairs at the return terminal, beside the hut and beneath that bull wheel, which spins suspended from a hinged parallelogram of steel girders. When it's running, that wheel and those steel girders rock and rattle like a clothes dryer chomping at a wet pair of work boots.
But not so loud that you can't hear a Frenchman's heart break.
"It loves to run and run and run," says maintenance man Paul Domotor, who gives Paddy Wagon its morning dose of loving in the form of adjustments made with a giant iron wrench straight out of the Flintstones. "It loves to run, just like Will loves to run and run and run."
Paddy Wagon, the nation, has as its primary role teaching skiers how to ride a chairlift and how to feel good about themselves in the process. This falls upon Ketchum, 69, a man with a cow-catcher mustache and blessed with the exceptional grace of being comfortable in his own skin.
He owns no phone. In summers, he sleeps with his flowers in a field in Stockbridge. In winter, he sometimes visits those fields because, devoid of color, it's like visiting the netherworld.
The fresh coffee he perpetually has on hand he decants from a dented thermos that resembles a chunk of space debris. He keeps tiny ceramic coffee cups warm upon the hut's space heater.
"You want coffee?" he says.
Chalk marked on the hut's inside doorway like an Epiphany house blessing are the Spanish words, "Eres el major," which means "You are the best." That was the parting note to Ketchum from a Peruvian student who worked Paddy Wagon with him for a couple of seasons.
"He's probably the only lift operator around here who gets cards and letters to the main office from skiers who have had such a great experience here because of him," Domotor says.
This is no wonder. The day before, Ketchum spied Kristy Mills and her young daughter, Sawyer, from Stamford, Conn., in line for Paddy Wagon. Having previously learned to his delight that Sawyer was named for "Tom Sawyer," Ketchum was prepared.
"Wait!" he told them, and pulled them out of the line.
He disappeared into the hut and reappeared with a favorite quote he had printed and prepared for Sawyer from "Huckleberry Finn." He crouched down and read the quote to her: " for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others."
"See," he told Sawyer, "every moment of life we're on a raft. When you're on the chairlift, you're on a raft. When you're driving home with your mom, you're on a raft. Get that right, and you get an A-plus."
He folded the paper and stuffed it into Sawyer's coat and hurried back to the lift, to the next wobbly set of skiers.
Amid orphaned goggles and gloves, he keeps a full-bodied miniature cutout of Kurt Vonnegut in the hut.
"I remember one year, a drought year, I woke up and read this article by him in Harper's where he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope, and she says, `You know, you have money now. Why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?'
"But he explains to her how he's going to have a great time in the process of going out and buying one envelope. The moral of the story is `We're here on Earth to fart around' — that `We're dancing animals.' I read that, and it made me feel like I wasn't a crazy person."
A GE kid raised on a farm on the Richmond-Pittsfield line, Ketchum learned to ski at Bousquet Mountain — "a brown bag ski area, GE kids coming at 5 o'clock and beating it up," he says. "Oh, I love to ski. It's beautiful. It's like, you know, you can't fly, but you can ski. We see birds and animals moving much faster than we do, and skiing allows us to be like them."
He worked the lifts at Bousquet for 25 years, but couldn't bear to watch as the hill got blinged out with luxury townhouses. He signed on at Butternut in 2004, joining with one of his heroes, the late ski instructor Einar Aas of Norway. An elegant skier, an aficionado of crappy red wine, Aas was fond of telling students, "You looked very graceful as you fell on your face."
And legend has it that it was Aas who named Paddy Wagon — to highlight its prime clientele, newbie-skiers on drunkard legs.
"The best thing he ever said to me, and I'll never forget, was `You're a people person,'" Ketchum says. "It made me feel so good, you know? I'm really not, but in this job right here, it seems to bring it out."
It's coming upon 8 a.m. Ketchum flicks the switches and Paddy Wagon groans to life. A rendition of "Hey Jude" on steel drums blares from the boombox.
A young boy in a blue coat steps up to the gate and hesitates. Ketchum walks up, greets him and takes him by the hand. "Ready, steady, walk," he says, escorting the boy to the red line as chair No. 12 comes bearing down upon them both.
"It's OK," Ketchum says. "Turn to your right and grab it, grab it hard and lean back, lean back."
Ketchum flips the safety bar down and steps out of the path like a bullfighter.
The boy is packaged and gone. Another special delivery from the beating heart of Butternut.
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