Did You Know: Getting Around in Winter
The Vermont Folklife archive is full of amazing first-person accounts of everyday life in Vermont and New England–past and present. In this feature, we share these stories with you.
Whether crossing a frozen body of water, or traveling hilly rural roads, Vermonters have had to come up with some particularly ingenious ways to get around in winter. In this month's "Did You Know?", we hear from four people who describe clever–and sometimes humorous–ways they and their friends managed to get from place to place in a world beset by ice and snow. Below, we present the voices of Dick Derry of Colchester, VT; John LaDue of Plattsburgh, NY; Alice DeLong of Middlesex, VT; and Alden Bettis of Waitsfield, VT in interviews from the early and mid-1990s.
When Vermonters think about Lake Champlain in winter these days, what normally comes to mind are activities like ice fishing, skating, cross-country skiing and hockey. Although less common today—and often very unsafe due to the impact of climate change on the thickness of the ice on Lake Champlain—in the not too distant past, the thickly-frozen lake served as an open, public highway used to transport goods and people from place to place. Here, Dick Derry talks about his family traveling over the frozen lake between Shelburne and Burlington, and how, in the 1940’s-1950’s, the route was thoughtfully marked to prevent people from getting lost in snowstorms:
In the wintertime our route to Burlington, once the lake froze, was over the ice. And of course, it avoided a ten-mile trip over dirt roads most of the way up until we got to Shelburne Road, all the roads were dirt roads. So, the route was from Shelburne Harbor over to Burlington across the ice. And to prevent being lost on the ice during a snowstorm–and you know, you've seen white outs–the route across the ice was marked with trees. They were little trees, like Christmas trees almost. And about every twenty feet, a hole would be chopped in the ice and a Christmas tree placed in it, and that marked the trails. So, if you were making your way home or, if it was bad weather, you wouldn't go to begin with, so it was normally the route home or a snowstorm came up, while you were over shopping and you could find your way back to Shelburne Harbor by following the trees because you couldn't see the tracks or anything out there. I don't know if–how traditional that is other places, but that was certainly the means of the Barrett boys to find their way home.
People had a variety of ways of traveling over the ice between towns along the shore in Vermont or across the lake to and from New York–including horse-drawn sleds, automobiles, skates, skis, and even iceboats. Next up, John Ladue of Plattsburgh, NY talks about a particularly harrowing iceboat trip taken by his nephews :
John: What is now known as Plattsburgh harbor was for years known as the Dock and Coal Company. All the coal in this area was brought up by sailing ships. And that's where it was unloaded. And the government built a break water, as they have in Burlington, at Plattsburgh. And we're told that this one is sinking little by little by little. But anyway, inside that break water would freeze, and it would be––spattered from there to a half mile north, it would be nothing to count 25 and 30 ice boats moored in the ice. And when I say moored it's done very, very easy. They would either have a pail of slush or snow, or a chipper, and they'd chip away the ice, get a hole and get water out and then freeze the runners in. So, when they went to go ice boating, they'd have to chip the ice away from the runners. Well as my nephews found out with their Hudson River schooner, THE one year they had it out, they painted it, they got it ready. Our good and wise sailing friend John Weeks who is a marvelous sailor was in on the deal. Peter and Steven and John Weeks. And they got the sails up, they got the gaff tightened down. And of course, in the summertime, you look at the lake and you know immediately if you want to get on it or not because you can tell how high the waves are. But you don't see the wind in the winter. And particularly if it's a west wind that swoops up and over and down on to the lake and it becomes very gusty, quite untrustworthy if you can't really see what it's doing to the waves. Anyway, they got all the sails up and all of a sudden [claps hands] crack! That thing broke loose and all 3 of them made a dive for it. And Steven said he was hanging on and looked over and the other guys just with their fingernails. And the thing took off with a startling speed, because the gust hit it. And the ropes just out of dumb luck, the ropes were assigned so the sails were workable. Steve said that they got almost halfway across the lake before they could finally pull themselves up onto the boat, and made sure that all 3 of them were alright. They were still going with the wind towards Vermont. And John said well, let's bring her about and start home. And Winslow, the other brother was out in his Arrow ice boat, which is a front-end steerer and very stable; 60-, 70-mile-an-hour boat also. Steven inched, started pulling in on the rope and inched the tiller around and just got broadside to the wind and crack! Another noise. The boom snapped.
Interviewer: Oh dear!
John: So, they still had the jib up and they could get home fairly well. But Winslow stuck with them to make sure they got back. They got back all right.
Ice boat on Lake Champlain. Note the people with skate sails on the left. (Photo: Lake Champlain Maritime Museum)
Our associate archivist Susan Creighton was already familiar with the idea of ice boating, but as she listened to John describing ice boating on the lake she heard him say: "And you had to watch quite carefully where you were going because not only were there ice boats out there, but there were skaters with skate sails." Skate sails? Susan had never heard of skate sailing before so she listened on and discovered this additional, delightful story from John, from sometime during the 1950’s or 1960’s:
We couldn't wait for the fall to come to go down and bug the rug companies in September and October, carpets used to come wrapped on bamboo poles, 15, 20 feet long, up to 2 to 3 inches in diameter. And we'd take the smaller ones, maybe 8 to 10 feet long and maybe an inch and a half in diameter, and fashion them into a kite, nothing more than an overgrown kite that was probably 6, 7 feet tall and 10 feet long. And we would lash those things at right angles and then fashion slots in the ends so that the ropes would fit there. And then beg our mothers or whoever to sew us some muslin sail cloth on to this thing. And if we were real fancy, we had an Isinglass window in the thing, to look through. And with our racing skates, you couldn't use hockey or figure skates on the lake because they would dull too quickly. Though the ice might look absolutely clean, there was land dust that would blow out on to it. And after an hour or so of skating on that clean ice, if you got down and looked at it you'd see a film of sand maybe blown off the beach. And these were rare, rare years when the lake would freeze glass clear with no snow on it so one could skate from downtown Plattsburgh to Cumberland Head, to the sister islands to Treadwell's Bay. Sometimes around Grand Isle. But you had to be very careful because the pressure of the ice would heave up. And sometimes the ice would go up on one side and you'd crawl up and look over, and there's a 15-foot opening of wide water and you wouldn't dare try to go across it. You'd have to skate maybe a mile and a half to go around the edge of the heave to get across it. And I remember one Sunday night waffle supper, we didn't have any formal supper on Sunday night. My dad said "well son, what'd you do today?" I said "oh, I went to Burlington." He said "you did what?" [8.12] He said "how'd you get there?" I said "on my skates. Tommy and I skate-sailed over." Oh my god! He just dropped his fork and slumped in his chair, he said "you mean you skate-sailed twenty miles down to Burlington?" I said "yeah, the ice was beautiful!" And then he got very much interested and wanted to know what route we took, and I said we went over to Grand Isle, the ferry dock and followed the isle down. And down from Providence to the Sand Bar Bridge and followed down that way. And I said we weren't very far from shore at anytime. He said, “that doesn't much matter in the wintertime.” But anyway, we did, we skate-sailed down and back.
Traveling over the frozen lake was one thing, but navigating snowy roads and large snow drifts was something else altogether–even when traveling on foot! Next, we hear from Alice DeLong, a Middlesex, VT resident from the Mad River Valley, recalling a time in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s when her father had to come up with an unconventional way to get her home:
And then I remember when we'd have blizzards. And part way up our road, I'd say about a third up our road, as I call it from the main road, which isn't the main road now it's a side road. Probably about a third of the way up, there was kind of a steep hill and then it leveled off a little bit, and turned a little bit t to the right, right on top of that hill, as the wind seemed to have a, I don't know, a dance all its own and just over the brow of that hill, would be drifts like you wouldn't believe. And I can remember once dad coming down to what we call the main road, which was, as I said the side road, and the snow was so deep that, let's see I was in the first grade. Yes, I was in the first grade. The snow was so deep that I no way could I make any headway as we got towards the brow of that hill. So, dad would just practically stand in his own footsteps and try to tramp it down for me. Well it was too deep and I was too short legged and, so he, he gave up. And he says,"I tell you what," he says, "you get up on top here, and" he says, "you just roll up." So, I rolled up the rest of the hill to get... I remember that.
Finally, we hear from Alden Bettis as he recalls a time during the 1930’s or 1940’s when he gave a friend a ride on a traverse sled, a ride that he wouldn't soon forget.
One day, this Harold Parker used to run the general store there, Parker and Fords there in Warren village. So he'd been up visiting a friend of his, Mr. Turner up above us there, and he come along down. And I said "Mr. Parker, would you like to ride to the village?" Well no, he didn't think so. I said "come on, it'll get you down there in no time flat." So, well ya, he guess he could. So, he got way on the back end of these long traverses. We cut lose. Every little while I'd hear the snow fly, and I'd look back. He was dragging his feet just as hard as he could, and the snow was flying right up. Said "why, don't drag your feet, we'll make it all right!" I don't know about this, I don't know about this! Well, I guess it really scared him when we went through that bridge down there. He had a brand fire new pair of overshoes, and I'm telling you the soles was getting pretty thin when he got to the village. They were practically smoking! He dragged his feet all the way down. He never forgot that ride, boy. Of course, I'd been doing it so much I didn't think nothing about it. He let me know in uncertain terms that that was the last ride he was taking with me! [Laughs] It was fun. But it was a hardy life, but I don't know, we were healthy then.
The traverse parade in front of the Pavilion in Montpelier
This excerpt is only one of several great stories that Alden Bettis shared during his interview. So next month, we'll continue our look at clever ways that Vermonters deal with the wintertime with a special focus on Alden, including his description of a particularly unexpected means of getting down a very long hill—I promise that you won't have heard of this one before!
Safety note: The frozen lake can be fun, but it is also extremely dangerous. Before venturing out on the ice, be sure to check conditions and take safety precautions.