COASTING ON PONKAPOAG
Looking backward from these days of slothful ease in getting about
it seems as if the golden days of Ponkapoag were those of a
generation and more ago. Then it was an isolated hamlet. To be
sure, there was a railroad a mile and a half away and the
venturous traveller might go north or south on it twice a day,
though few Ponkapoag people were that sort of venturesome
travellers. The days of the stage coaches had passed and the place
was more thrown upon its own resources, especially for excitement,
than it had been since they had made it a stopping point on a main
thoroughfare. The railroad brought bustle to many hamlets, but it
took it away from Ponkapoag and left it a sleepy hollow. Even the
days of the Cherry Tavern and the Ponkapoag Inn were past and the
poet Aldrich and other people of latter-day renown had not
appeared to make it famous.
Now the trolley car buzzes up and down the long steep slopes of
Ponkapoag Hill and the automobiles honk in endless procession both
ways. The old houses stand, but a new generation occupies them and
the cosey, self-centered life of the old village has completely
passed. Even the people who knew its traditions of a half-century
ago are gone, too, and though the Christmas snow brought good
coasting I doubt if it brought many coasters to the old hill. Yet
Ponkapoag Hill was once famous in the region all about for its
coasting and the enthusiasm and ingenuity of the Ponkapoag
coasters. On days and nights in the old-fashioned winters, when
the sledding of big logs to the sawmill on Ponkapoag brook had
made the course down the hill one glare of adamantine snow between
deep rifts, the population of the village used to turn out; not
the big and little boys and girls only, but the grown-ups even to
the venerable gaffers of those days who could remember how they
used to coast there before the Civil War was thought of, when the
Cherry Tavern still fed scores of pleasure-seeking Bostonians on
big, luscious black-heart cherries each June, and in winter the
Ponkapoag Inn had its patrons from the big city not only for
coasting but for pickerel fishing on the pond.
Modern easy methods of transportation and communication have put
the typical New England village, with its manly, self-reliant,
self-centered life, out of existence, and with it have passed or
become decadent many of its community sports. I doubt if Ponkapoag
will ever again see such coasting as it has seen, and I fancy the
same may be truly said of hundreds of big hills in other towns.
The sport still holds in one form or another, but it has changed.
Coasting in the streets is rightly forbidden now in many
communities. The chances of meeting dangerous obstructions in
these days of multitudinous automobiles and omnipresent trolley
cars are too great: In the old Ponkapoag days such things were
unknown, and the rarely occasional sleigh or wood-sled was little
to be feared. The drivers who were not coasting themselves knew
the coasters had the right of way and "cleared the lulla" to let
them by.
There came nights like that of the Christmas just passed when the
still, dry air intoxicated the coasters and carried their shouts
far tinder the golden moon. Then there would be a constant
procession of swiftly flying forms from the brow of the hill where
Blue Hill loomed clear-cut against the velvet sky behind, to
George B.'s blacksmith shop, at least. Certain flyers were fabled
to go farther and, on perfect sledding, to make the gentle
declivity clear to Potash Meadow and brook. Such as did this were
famous the region through.
It is probable that the coasting on Ponkapoag Hill began with the
coming of white settlers to the region, "the Dorchester Back
Woods." The Indian invented the toboggan, but he seems to have
used it for a sled of burden and not as a pleasure chariot.
Coasting is essentially a white man's joy. No white man could have
a toboggan at the top of a snow-clad hill and not immediately use
it to coast down on. It is in the blood. Tradition has it that the
legions of Caesar came over the Alps, and finding the snowy slopes
in front of them, immediately sat down on their shields and slid
down upon the Northern races they had come to conquer. Many a New
England youngster in days gone-by learned to come down a hill on a
barrel stave in much the same way; he, too, with blood of the
conqueror in his veins. The toboggan wasn't really invented; it
grew. From that invention has worked out many devices specially
fitted to the sport under special conditions. Switzerland has seen
coasting come up from the utilitarian exuberance of the Roman
legions to a sport which is international and which draws coasting
experts from all over the world. They call it tobogganing, which,
of course, it is not and in modern days at least never was, for it
is all done on a sled with runners. "Schlittli" the Swiss call it,
and though it seems a far cry it may be that our word sled has
been developed from it. At least both begin with S.
*****
Elaborate books have been written about "tobogganing" as it has
developed at Davos and St. Moritz, in the Alps. The Swiss
Schlittli seems to be much like what the Yankee boys call a
"girl's sled," a board seat set high on skeleton runners, that I
fancy were at first of the plain wood but later came to be shod
with flat iron. On this the coaster sits and goes down the hill
sedately, feet foremost. Thus the early Swiss tobogganing was
done, the rider steering by putting out a foot to the right or
left, after the fashion of the small girl today on her similar
sled. Such coasting is done by careful elderly people in St.
Moritz or Davos today, only they use wooden pegs held in either
hand to steer by. The courses on which they coast are short and
straight, modest little coasts such as befit their condition. Then
American sports brought to Switzerland the clipper sled. It easily
outdistanced the Schlittli, and for the swift, winding courses on
which the races were held became the favorite. The clipper sled
was born in America, and millions of boys here have them today.
They are swift, sturdy, and well fitted for the sport. Their solid
wooden runners were long ago shod with flat steel, but for a
generation that has been superseded by spring steel, round
runner-shoes that add to the swiftness most materially.
*****
In 1877 the first of this coasting was done by the English at St.
Moritz, and ever since the courses there have been steadily
improving, and "toboggans" as well. The final word has become a
skeleton frame of steel, the wooden runners being entirely removed
from within the shoe and the rider occupying a thin board hung
between the upper frames. The under part of the heavy steel runner
is grooved so as to grip the ice, and the whole "rocks" after the
style of the old-fashioned "rocker" skate. Thus on a curve the
rider, putting his weight aft is able to turn more rapidly without
the sled losing its grip on the ice beneath. On these the Swiss
coasters negotiate S curves at surprising speed, and are estimated
to reach sixty or even seventy miles an hour on the straight
stretches of the world-famous course. As might be supposed by any
one who coasts, this speed is not made with the rider sitting on
his sled girl fashion. Long ago the American visitors taught the
St. Moritz coasters that the way to ride a clipper sled on a swift
coast was to go "belly-bump," prone on one's belly, with a foot
ready to steer at the right or left as the case might be. The
stability is surer because the centre of gravity is lower, the
wind resistance is less, and the method is safer and better, if it
is not so dignified. The records made thus converted the most
phlegmatic Englishmen at St. Moritz, and since then this has been
the approved fashion.
But we have gone coasting a long way from Ponkapoag Hill. There,
long before the Swiss course was thought of the evolution in sleds
was going on, and though Ponkapoag did not evolve the steel-frame
skeleton coaster it got some tasty rigs of its own. Similar things
were brought out all over New England, I fancy, on all big hills
where Yankee boys coasted. One of these was the double-runner, or
double-ripper as it was sometimes called, rather ominously. I meet
double-runners on the hills sometimes now-a-days, but not the
leviathans of old. The beginning of this community coaster is
simple. It is two clipper sleds fastened together so that the rear
one runs in the tracks of the front one. Then came a board placed
lengthwise across the two and the double-runner was fairly begun.
Later this board came to be a long plank that would hold a dozen.
With that the capacity of the common clipper sled was reached. But
they did not stop at that at Ponkapoag. They built two big sleds
specially, shod them with proper steel runners at the local
blacksmith shop, and set high above them an enormous, stout plank
with foot rests and all sorts of modern conveniences.
The men who told of this enormous rig, a "double-ripper" in very
truth, are dead and I can't prove it by them, so I hesitate to
state the length of this mammoth coasting device and the number of
people it would carry lest aspersions be cast on their veracity--and
mine--but it was very long and would carry a surprisingly
large number. All Ponkapoag was wont to come out of moonlight
nights and ride upon it, and its fame carried that of the little
village very far. To have coasted on the big Ponkapoag double-runner
was as much a thing to be mentioned boastfully in certain
sections as it was in others to have been presented at court.
Bob-sled is a proper, dictionary name for the ordinary form of
this device and it is used at Davos and St. Moritz for jolly
family parties on the straight courses. There they equip it with a
bugle to herald its approach with joyous tootings, a bridle of
steel wire by which it is steered in combination with pressure on
a lever by means of the feet of the steersman, and also with a
curious brake which consists of a nail studded board so rigged to
the rear sled that the last man can drop it down to the ice and
anchor it by the grip of the nails, thereby retarding its speed.
The steersman on the mammoth Ponkapoag bob-sled steered by a rope
bridle and the use of his feet on a stout wooden cross-bar, and
his position was no sinecure. He had at least a ton of people on
board and he had no brake.
After the leviathan slid over the brow of the hill and began its
downward course there could be no slowing up, no backward sled
tracks, till the end of the course was reached. He must negotiate
the curve at Captain Bill Tucker's corner at lightning speed and
must rightly manage the mass in mighty momentum after that, if he
would not spill them all in Ponkapoag brook. The big Ponkapoag
bob-sled needed no bugle to herald its coming. When it started off
and especially when it swung the curve at Captain Bill's the
mingled melody of delight and dismay, masculine and feminine,
could easily be heard a mile, and throughout the course the chant
of the coasters carried runic warning well ahead of the
approaching thunderbolt. In the legend of it all I find no mention
of anyone being hurt.
A great if not famous inventor once lived in Ponkapoag. James
Basin came from one of the Channel Islands, a French Huguenot,
with his family, and settled in the little village; it would be
hard to tell why. He invented the "Basin trumpet," a curious kind
of cornet with which one gets change of pitch by turning a crank
with one hand while holding the instrument to the mouth with the
other. This was played in the choir in the Congregational church
of those early days. He invented many other musical instruments,
one the forerunner of the cabinet organ which made a fortune for
certain New Englanders. He invented a braiding machine which has
since his day made millions for Rhode Island factories. It may be
that he invented the strangest form of double-runner that I have
heard of, and which was used on Ponkapoag Hill, but I fancy not.
That I guess was an inspiration worked out on the spat by some
hardy Yankee. It consisted of a great wood-sled on which half the
village could be accommodated. This was hauled by horses to the
top of the hill, a boy of more than ordinary courage, strength,
and--it seems to me--skill, sitting on that diminutive sled in
front of the great on-rushing mass and guiding it in safety to the
bottom of the hill, time after time.
*****
That a boy should have been found that would turn this trick after
he had once successfully done it is not so difficult to believe as
that one should have the hardihood to undertake it for the first
time to find out whether he could do it or not. This Yankee
Casabianca, or whatever he ought to be called, I myself knew after
he had reached years of middle life and I dare say discretion. I
remember well his breadth of back and depth of chest, and I think
it quite true that he once lifted a barrel of flour in his teeth,
but whether he got his start in physical strength steering that
Ponkapoag-invented double-runner down the long hill, or whether he
had to have the strength inborn in the first place to be able to
do it, I cannot say.
They have a wonderful curve over at St. Moritz known as the
"Cresta Run," 1320 yards long and abounding in hair-raising
thrills from start to finish. Hardly has the rider, lying prone on
his steel-skeleton flyer, got under good headway before he comes
to the "church leap." Here a swinging descent shoots him into a
double compound curve where he must flash to the left and again to
the right in letter S fashion, helped to be sure, by raised banks
on either side as he needs them. The banks help, but it takes
lightning combinations of wisdom, skill and strength to make the
turns in safety for all that, nor does he have a chance for a long
breath before he shoots at ever increasing speed into the
"battledore" where the course turns almost at a right angle and
shoots him on into the "shuttlecock" where he must negotiate
another right angle. Then he must immediately take "stream corner"
and be ready for his plunge into "the straight." From this again
he has to take "Bulpett's corner." By this time he may be going
seventy miles an hour, but "cresta leap" is before him, after
which he has only to go up the steep hill which is supposed to
arrest his speed at the finish. Yet even here his skill must be in
full play, as riders have been known to go forty feet in air over
the crest of the hill and take a fine plunge into the soft snow
beyond. Indeed, the soft snow waits the venturesome rider at every
turn of the famous St. Moritz course, and many there be who go to
it before "church leap" is fairly negotiated, thus early in the
game. The whole course, nearly a mile, is frequently made in a
little over a minute and a quarter.
All this is fine to see, without doubt, and finer still to do, but
do you know, if I could have my choice and could see but one, I
would choose to see that leviathan double-runner of a half-century
ago swinging the curve at Captain Bill Tucker's corner, followed
by that big wood-sled with the half of Ponkapoag's population on
it, and hear the joyous Yankee shouts as they resounded all the
way from the crest of the hill to George B.'s blacksmith shop.