7397-R4_MSA_Dec2020_MaineSnowmobiler

Family Fun Bob Flagg

This issue of the Maine Snow- mobiler is about families and fun. As a member of the MSA since 1980 I can tell stories about the Association over the years. First, I want to tell you about my early introduction to the sport. As a young man I was intrigued by the opening of a MotoSki shop in our little town by a couple of entrepreneur brothers. I had already seen a couple of sleds at my Uncles farm in Lyman as he had a wide track workhorse and my Aunt had a sleek and stylish Skidoo Olympic. My cousins and I were in our early teens and we couldn’t wait to go to Grandpa Taylors Farm at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Uncle Jim would get out his sled for us to run around the huge fields but it took a lot of coxing to get him to let us use Aunt Dotties sled. He knew we were just a bunch of young boys who thought speed and jumps were fun. I was hooked

and when the new sled shop opened in our small town, I was pushing my Dad to buy one. He had other ideas about what I should be doing with any extra time I had, and tractors were deemed a more practical use of the tight dollars. My best friend lived about a mile down the road and his fam- ily place was my second home for many years. Mr. and Mrs. Clark had three kids of their own and me. He decided to purchase a new sled from the local shop and when the first ½ inch of snow came we drove him crazy till he reluctantly agreed to fire up the new sled and take it for a spin around the dooryard. It was a bug that has never gone away. They had a huge field behind their home and we packed down every inch of that hill every time there was a new snowfall. Mr Clark couldn’t get a ride in so he bought a second sled. Now he

had a Zypher and a MS-18. The new sled was a 2 cylinder so it was our favorite as it was faster (and less tippy). This allowed us to pack down the field twice as fast and sure enough we started racing them a bit. Well Mr. Clark still had more kids than he did sleds, still couldn’t get a ride in, so sled number 3 was purchased for the next season. Now the youngest kid in the clan was always getting the short end of the stick and decided to save his money and buy his own sled after a couple of years. By this time, a bunch of the local families had started a Snowmobile club and the Friday and Saturday nights were spent traveling back and forth across town. It used to take about 5 hours to go from the Clarks over the hills and through the valley across a major stream to get down into town to have a short meeting and then travel back.

Fast forward to the ninety’s when I was dragging a pipe drag over that same trail and could run over and back in about 20 min- utes once the trail froze up. Mr Clark was a high school teacher and I used to ride to school with him. I learned the true meaning of pure generosity from him. Every day on the way to school he’d drop off the gas cans at the gas station and pick them up on the way home. We’d run those sleds until we had to drag one home cause it ran out of gas someplace on the hill. In 1973, near the end of the Vietnam war, I joined the Navy and missed 5 years of snowmobiling. By the time I returned home the sleds had changed so much I didn’t know what happened. One of my friends that was always on ‘full on screech’ had gotten ahold of a Kawasaki sled with an aluminum chassis. There were snowmobile clubs in every

town and trails that intercon- nected them and after a ride on the back of his sled over thru to Washington I knew I was going to have to buy a sled of my own. We found an Arctic Cat for sale out in Manchester that was a ‘wifes sled’. Stored in a garage with a cover AND electric start! I registered that sled in Augusta and on my way back from IF&W I hunted down the address of the MSA and found some guy’s garage. I told the guy (Judd Rob- erts) what I was looking for and he informed me that he owned the Maine Snowmobiler news- paper. He said I was welcome to join the Association but rec- ommended I join through a club. That was in the 1979-1980 season and I have been a member ever since. The club I joined was in the next town to me because my girlfriend lived there. They had an active club where her family were active members. It

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