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or How the Ernest Thibodeau Memorial Ski Jump got its official name by Bucky Lewis The Ernest Thibodeau Memorial Ski Jump stood alone in the skyline surrounded by Arnolds Bog. The great bog was named after Benedict Arnold led his army through it while escaping the Indians after his attack on Quebec, surviving only by eating insects, moss, and each other. Only one thin finger of ridge land that ran into the pimple of land that held the jump enabled folks to easily get to this mighty northern icon of mankind's tribute to balls. The ski jump was named after Ernie Thibodeau, the only shitkicker from these parts to play sports and get paid for it. "Airborne Ernie" was a course setter for the ASSHO, the American Society of Snowmobile Hill-climbers Organization. ASSHO events were popular with the hops, grain, and herb crowd. They were building an ever-growing fan base for the spectacular crashes, tumbles and air time that happened more often than not in the unique sport of snow machine hill-climbs. As a course setter, Airborne Ernie was responsible for finding the toughest hill you could climb with a snowmobile in the area where there was to be a competition. That is to say, a hill that nobody could make it up 'cept Ernie, and maybe a handful of others. So it was inevitable and in no small part regrettable that this story would have to be told. When color TV came onto the scene in the sixties, sports competitions started to consolidate into bigger event locations and be broadcast from there. This turned the smaller venues into icons of memories past, and the ghosts of zoning future. Ski jumps were hit particularly hard if they were anything under 70 meters. The one at the Stew Bog was 58.7 meters (unofficially 60). Aptly named the Man-eating Maid of the Arnold Stew Bog because of the way she made so many men crash and burn, this ski jump hadn't seen an open day for five years and was showing it's age. When the wind would howl through the cedars of that swamp the old girl would come alive and be young again: moaning, humming, shuddering, heaving, squealing, and undulating with so much energy that a young man would add to the hardwood population jut being near it. Ever beckoning, she was irresistible. When the Hilltoppers Tour had a stop in Airborne Ernie's hometown, he decided to turn up the heat. A former National Champion himself, Ernie was always compelled at pushing the envelope. This competition found him bound and determined to create a record setting big air course, one that would forever land him into the history books and beyond. Just how far beyond was soon to be seen. Ernie woke up on a morning he perhaps should have stayed in bed. He had a dream the night before, something to do with interbreeding. He wasn't quite sure who was in the dream other than him, or what type of interbreeding it was. And then it hit him: "If the Mountin won't cum to Moohamid, bring Moohamid to tha Mountin". Instead of scouring the county for steep hills to hold the event at, why not, with a little bit of Yankee ingenuity jury-rig one up, at the same time reopening the old Stew Bog Jump. He planned to build a ramp up from the ground to the drop off lip of the jump and have the contestants try and make it up to the lip where the flat spot of the takeoff platform would now be the top. The plan sounded great until well into the competition when no one had made it with their snow machines to the top of the end of the jump. It was cold that morning of the big day. It was snot frozen on your face cold. And that wasn't steam coming up from the ground and trees. The open water in the bog holes seemed to be catching their collective breath from the ice surrounding them. Blame the damn Canadiens! That radiational cooling in the air coming down from the north was somehow their fault. Like a bad hangover, it kept coming at you in waves. The frost that covered the jump that morning made it look faster than sneeze goes through a mitten. So by the time of the end of the first round of man and snowmobile versus snow covered plywood and gravity, no one had qualified by making it up to the jump lip. People wanted to have at least one insane trooper make it up to victory, if for no other reason than to qualify the event. Unfortunately when Ernie designed and tested his work-of-art course, he had not factored in the equation of black ice. Ernie knew at the turn before the second round he would have to silence the restless gentry by conquering his own creation. The only way he figured that anyone could make it to the top that morning was to get one hell of a 'running staht' sose you could hit the ramp carrying tremendous amounts of speed. As long as you could hang on and keep fairly straight, you could make it up to the top. Airborne Ernie had the Sheriff's department clear the traffic out of the access road so that he could get a REAL good start, and the challenge was on. Revving up his cousin- designed nitro-boosted Bombardier engine in the custom- fitted 87 Harley frame, Ernie gave the thumbs up to the crowd as he let off the brake and gunned his doctored up Skidoo into history. The Sheriff's radar had him clocked at 150 miles per hour as he made the steep part of the climb up the ice-encrusted plywood. The freshly sharpened spikes of the track bit nicely into the ice when Ernie hit the nitro button on his missile. There was an explosion of gas as the hybrid Mad Maxmobile roared up the climb. Then the unthinkable happened. Not only had man and machine made it to the top of the first incline - they had passed that shortly after Ernie had hit the nitro - they were well on their way to the top of the sixty-meter jump! Everyone knows that what goes up must come down, even faster when coated in ice. Ernie had almost made it to the top of the upper purchase when the nitro ran out along with his luck. The only good thing that happened at that moment was that his butt was finally warm from the brown spot that suddenly appeared. Gravity started to get even with him, hurdling him faster and faster backwards down the ramp of the 60 Meter Maid of the Stew Bog. When he finally hit the lip of the jump as he slid wildly down the jump, he was way beyond breaking the land speed record for going backwards. Hitting the jump in the way it was designed for but back assward, Ernie also proceeded to break every altitude and distance record that ever will be associated with not only ski jumping, but unaided human flight as well. Up and out he flew, past the landing, beyond the crowd, beyond the parking lot, beyond the nipple of land, deep into the icy bog. To this day, locals who were there that day still disagree on where he landed, because he and his rocket sled were never found. One of the theories on why he was never found is that he plunged through the ice in a deep pool and kept going into one of the many underground springs that fed the bog, the momentum carrying him to rest somewhere near the center of the Earth, or at least close to China. Local Folks say that when you go out to the Island you can hear an added voice to go with the ghost maiden of the Bog, especially on windy days as the wind whips through the rotting two-by-fours of the ski jump turned rocket launcher. If you close your eyes and listen real careful-like you'd swear you can hear Airborne Ernie hollering "holy shit!" as he still fights his way through the wild blue yonder forever into infamy. Author: Bucky Lewis . |