In the Free Press office there is a greatly enlarged circa 1930 picture of former editor Louis Simmons sitting at his editorial desk.
It is a compelling photograph. Louis looks so content, so confident, so very, very young, so thin and fit. His wire-rimmed glasses give him a scholarly look that hints of the powerful intellect of this newly minted magna cum laude Syracuse University School of Journalism graduate.
I have seen that picture many times since it was hung over his old desk. Louis is sitting on a high stool that was necessary to reach the massive desk, but it was only recently that I noticed that he was wearing ski boots! Not the buckled hi-tech boot of today, of course, but the ankle-high, soft-leather lace boot with a box toe and a groove cut into the heel. I was momentarily puzzled about that strange, somewhat inappropriate footwear in a newspaper office until I remembered that Louis would often ski to work. Here is the story as I remember it:
Louis had started working in 1931 for L.P. Quinn, his former high school principal. Mr Quinn had just converted what had been a throw-away handbill called the “Tip Top Topics” into a weekly newspaper. These were Depression years and Louie had no car and, at a salary of $15 per week, slim prospects of getting one for a while. This meant walking nearly two miles to and from the shop, which was then located on Mill Street.
In the winter, I remember him telling me that he found it easier to ski back and forth, laying out “a short-cut trail” from behind the new home his father had built in 1923 at Demars Boulevard in the Junction (next to the beautiful stone Presbyterian Church built three years earlier). By skiing across Racquette Pond, he could reach the shop in about fifteen minutes.
Those skis served Louie well for many years. They were long by today’s standards with a narrow, graceful cut made from a single straight-grained piece of ash noted for its flexibility and lightness. The bottom of the ski was a deep brown color from repeated coats of pine tar heated into the wood over the kitchen stove. The pine tar provided waterproofing and a surface that accepted canning paraffin, which was then applied for glide.
In his use of skis in 1930, Louie was slightly ahead of the curve in terms of skiing popularity. It wasn’t until after the 1932 Winter Olympics in nearby Lake Placid that skiing held any interest locally — and then only in the most rudimentary way in terms of know-how, facilities, and, indeed, equipment. For example, the first ski bindings or ski harness, as we call them, that the youth of my day used were oversized rubber bands or loops cut from inner tubes. The rubber loop went over the rubber boots all kids wore, one end placed behind the heel and the other end stretched over the toe to hold the foot into the simple leather toe strap fastened to the ski with screws or through a mortise in the ski itself.
Up until the 1936 Olympics held in Germany, when Alpine events (downhill or slalom) were introduced for the first time (Lake Placid had only jumping and cross-country events), skiing was pretty much limited here to gliding along modest terrain or going straight down (easy ski down — climb back up) inclines like Bloody Nose Hill located near the Racquette River on Stetson Road.
Gradually, however, downhill skiing, as opposed to cross-country skiing, became the dominant branch of the sport and the almost exclusive department of it for almost a generation after World War II. That change began here in the late 1930s, sparked by an energetic local group that called themselves the Pioneer Sno Club as well as a push by the Rod and Gun Club headed by Dr. Glen Delisser, beloved family doctor here for many years.
An uphill lift was constructed that consisted of a continuous rope around pulleys powered by the rear wheel of propped-up Ford truck and called, of course, a rope tow. It was located on what was known as Manning’s Hill, or simply the Reservoir, to the rear of the present-day veterinary clinic just beyond Moody bridge.
The touring ski, or cross-country ski, for the most part languished in the attic until the fitness boom and other considerations (expense of Alpine skiing, love of nature, etc.) caused a revival in the late 1970s. It continues today with increasing popularity, many skiers enjoying both aspects of the sport. As a youngster, as that change was occurring, I would often join Louie (my mother, Anne, was his sister) on long ski trips on the many nearby wooded roads that offered gentle contours laid out for logging with horses. Perfect for skiing.
It was on some of those excursions that I learned more about those Depression years and the struggle to keep the Free Press a viable concern. It meant, for example, a twelve-hour day, six days a week, and no vacation up until the 1940s — and then just one week a year thereafter.
Cash money was scarce for everyone in the community and hard work was the key to survival. Yet, as Louie would relate, “the work was enjoyable, even while demanding, because of the primitive second-hand equipment. Some years, the total revenue from advertising was $28 along with the weekly paycheck and a warning that ‘we’ll keep going as long as we can.’ Mr. Quinn was easy to get along with (unless you were called to his office at school for discipline, as I often was) and gave me a free hand in editing the paper. The work was interesting and shop crew all friends, and I never regretted casting our lot with the hometown newspaper.”
Note: Louie had many offers from larger metropolitan newspapers, but he never considered them seriously. I think that in reading Mostly Spruce and Hemlock, the highly regarded definitive history of this community written by Louie during a long winter when he was rendered immobile by a broken leg, you can get a hint of why he declined those offers. The book is truly a labor of love and, excellent resource aside, it reflects in its pages a love for his hometown. You can see that affection also in his talented skill as an artist that produced a vast number of oil paintings based on Adirondack landscapes and studies in other media such as watercolor and pen and pencil. These works represent in their artistry and subject matter a deep love and respect for the woods and waters where he grew up and, as previously noted, he never regretted not leaving his hometown. This “tip top” town was a huge beneficiary of that decision.