the picture of dave's dog following ann on snowshoes in their yard close to the watershed sales site after a typical snow fall reminded me of our childhood ski trips to big bunker and little bunker. to get to big or little bunker from south pewabic where i grew up you took the c $ h railroad track to florida location by peltoniemi's and from there you took the street car track towards lake linden until you came to the maple bush were small bunker was located. it wasn't a big hill (i think one of the peers named it for the battlefield during the civil war days, the battle of bunker hill which we read about in grade school). we took turns going down the hill always on the same track to make the ski ruts, each skier going a little farther cuz the trail was broken for him. we kept this his up until the rut would take to the bottom of the hill. then at the steepest part of the hill we made a ski jump a few feet high by piling snow using our skis as shovels, panked it down and made ruts in the jump ramp. then the fun began. we had contests as to who could get the most distance over the jump without falling down. our skis were homemade finlander specials but some kids had store skis. either way we had to keep our skis properly pine tarred and waxed with candle wax. i doubt they even had any actual ski wax those days like now. the bindings on the skis were a simple leather strap. in order to keep the foot from slipping out of the strap we used a strip of car tire innertube which we placed around our ankle and after we put our toe into the strap we stretched the rubber over our toe. it helped a lot to keep our foot in the strap, especially going up hill. the distance to the hill was about one half mile from home up hill each way and sometimes brutally cold. by the time we made the trip, did the hill and came back home we sometimes were frozen in the feet and hands. some of the kids were roy mukka, johnny aalto, ron richards, nipple holland, gail wickstrom, and sometimes a bunch of neighborhood girls also. not to mention the florida location kids who would be there also. it sure was fun and a beautiful place to be.
