Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte

The story of our ski trip is one of my favorite memories of my time at Somerville high school. The following story takes place in 1970 when I was a junior.

With army surplus duffel bags bulging with Budweiser and Ripple wine, me and two friends snuck aboard the bus heading for a Somerville high school ski trip in New Hampshire. We were caught by the teachers and thrown off the bus. My buddies Richard and Linda and me started to hitch hike.

In no time we were on the side of the north bound lane of route 93. Considering me and Richie had very long hair and all three of us dressed like the hippies that we were, it was surprising that we got rides. But we did get rides and one guy even treated us to a pizza at a restaurant near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border. We finished our snacks and headed back out to the highway and stuck our thumbs out again on our merry way.

We knew that on Monday we would get in trouble with the teachers that took us off the bus but we were determined to have a good time in ski country. We were excited about being there but we had no intentions of skiing. We made it up there and managed to book a hotel room where we put all our stuff. We stopped to have a couple of cocktails. I remember breaking open a box of Cheez-Its while we planned our next move. We were anxious to continue our adventures in North Conway, New Hampshire.

If my memory serves me correctly the hotel was the Iron Mountain Lodge or something that sounds a lot like that. We were enjoying our New Hampshire adventure as we waited for our friends in the ski club to arrive. We couldn’t believe that we made it there hitch hiking before the bus.

 We were the epitome of hippies. Long hair and bell bottoms. We weren’t really the ski club type. We were members of a student group called the Committee of Concerned Students or the CCS. We even had an underground newspaper called the Inside Agitator. We were the ones who organized the walkouts for the dress code and the no heat demonstration. I can’t forget the look on the teacher advisors face when he caught the three of us hiding in the back of the bus.

 It was now about 9:00 p.m. We had settled into our lavish hotel room. It was a small room with one double bed. After exploring the hotel grounds, we sat on the steps. We were there for about half an hour before we saw the ski club bus pulling up. The teacher advisors got off the bus first. When they saw that the very same three kids that were thrown off the bus about three hours earlier, forming a welcoming committee, their jaws dropped. They were flabbergasted.

One of my favorite high school memories is the day we beat the bus to the ski trip. A priceless memory of the good old days.