40-year-old Choppers

27 February 2007

We had a well-behaved snow storm here last weekend. It arrived on Saturday and left a foot of snow on the ground by Sunday morning, allowing time to dig out and for the snowplows to do their thing.

While I was out shoveling and snowblowing, I noticed some holes and unraveling seams in my old gloves. These were my Grandpa Louis’ Choppers. He died about 30 years ago, and I imagine they were at least 10 years old at that time, so these are some family relics.

I bought new liners once, and over the years I’ve stitched seams back together several times. With another storm on the way and a snow-tubing trip in the works, it seemed like a good time to sit down with needle and thread and get to work.

It’s satisfying to work with my hands, and it feels good to repair these old mittens and keep them in service. They’re very warm with the outer leather layer and separate inner layer.

They’re also tough. Our Boxer dog, Morgan, loved it when I put these things on because then we could do some serious ‘rassling. (Although I could still feel those teeth. Maybe that’s why the hole in the thumb now…)

As much as I like the digital world, there’s something very compelling about the real one. That big room with the blue ceiling. I think that’s why I don’t really play video games anymore, or get in to things like Second Life. Nothing against them; they can be a lot of fun. But they’re still such pale imitations.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 27 February 2007 at 9:11 pm
filed under miscellany

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Comments

Nice - thanks for this, Scott.

Posted by Amy Stephen on 28 February 2007 at 7:40 am

Doug’s choppers are 25 years old (his first pair got trashed after he changed the brakes one winter) and Connor got his first pair this year. They are great for Minnesota winters. A friend from Illinois said they had never heard of them until they moved to Minnesota.

Posted by Stacy on 28 February 2007 at 7:49 am

Okay little brother, consider this a back link. I have no idea how to do that, but I wanted to let you know I wrote about this post on my site. (I know, I’m hopeless)

Posted by Stacy on 28 February 2007 at 8:46 am

I’m from Illinois and I’ve never heard of them either. Great Post!

Gretchen
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Girls Can’t WHAT?

Posted by Gretchen Cawthon on 28 February 2007 at 1:39 pm

I’m glad you guys enjoyed the post — thanks for commenting.

Stacy, it doesn’t look like Blogger really supports trackbacks, although I see some scripts out there that might let you add it in. But if you’re going to trackback, you really should point to the permalink, so for all time and until the heat death of the universe, people can easily follow your comment back to the related post. All the same, I appreciate your kind words. You never said stuff like that back when we were growing up and you were flushing my head down the toilet.

Posted by Scott Carpenter on 28 February 2007 at 2:55 pm

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