Once in a while, it’s a good idea to pause in your journey through life and realize what might have happened if you turned right instead of left at that fork in the road.
Had I not ridden my bicycle along with a friend for 3 miles to the Polar Palace ice arena in Hollywood, I might never have felt the cold air against my face as I wobbled around the rink, constantly making left turns. Did that set me on a path of chasing cold winters and powder snow with a camera for the rest of my life? Who knows.
In junior high school, I grew almost 10” in height and only put on about 3 lbs. in weight. As a result, I spent a lot of years playing basketball instead of football.
The boundary between two high schools went down the middle of the street where I lived. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would’ve gone to a different high school and never met Ted Nicholson, who took me to San Onofre for my first ride on a surfboard. That was the first time I caught a wave and rode it to the beach while standing up.
Had I not met the president of the Bell & Howell camera company, Chuck Percy, in my ski school class in Sun Valley, I might never have started taking movies and earning a living doing it. When I started making ski movies, there were 15 chairlifts in America, today there are more than 460 resorts. I hope I had a little bit to do with that growth.
If the weather had not been stormy with lots of powder snow, I might never have enjoyed it as much. Had the weather not been rotten in Sun Valley between Christmas and New Year’s of 1984, I might never have been drawing cartoons for kids in the warming hut and I might never have met my wife.
Had I not spent four months filming Jean Claude Killy after he won three gold medals, I would not have spent the next three years fighting my way out of bankruptcy because I was the unfortunate low bidder for the job.
Had they not shown that ski film in the break between pro football in the East Coast on Sunday afternoon and the West Coast later in the day, more people might’ve watched it and I might have gotten another job producing television shows.
Had Ward Baker and I not taken our 8mm surfing movies with us those two years we lived in the parking lot in Sun Valley, I might never have gotten in the film business.
Had I not brought my 20-foot camera powerboat to the Pacific Northwest to explore this wonderful part of the world with my new best friend who became my wife, I might still be living in Manhattan Beach in a 25-foot-wide lot with a 3-foot setback on each side. That left room for a 19-foot wide house that could be as long as 90 feet, mine was only 88 feet long.
Had I not bought a 20-foot-long, fiberglass Pacific catamaran from Carter Pyle in 1962, I would never have spent so many great years driving sailboats around the buoys, nor would I have had so many enjoyable single-handed trips from Redondo Beach for the 22 miles to Catalina Island.
Had my grandmother never given me a birthday present of roller skates, the next year a wagon and finally a bicycle on my 11th birthday, almost the entire Los Angeles basin wouldn’t have opened up to me.
The bicycle was state-of-the-art Schwinn balloon tires with heavyweight fenders and I added a taillight and speedometer. I soon removed the heavyweight fenders, added a rack on the back that could carry my newspapers for my route of the 93 Hollywood Citizen News, six afternoons a week. I think the paper was $.90 a month and we had to collect that money from our customers and I don’t think a month went by without somebody moving out without paying. This, of course, was in the bottom of the depression when 25 percent of able-bodied men could not find work.
The entire time I ran my film business I only worked one day for Hollywood. I was hired to get point of view photography from the front seat of a roller coaster. It took half a dozen rides at least to figure out the inertia of the camera as the cars went through the transitions and over the top of the high points. I furnished the camera gear including camera and tripod and was paid $35 for the day and that was a lot of money in 1950.
It amounted to almost twice as much as I could earn as a journeyman carpenter framing houses. It was a monumental day for me because I had a camera in my hand and was being paid to use it. What’s wrong with that?
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. Read more of Warren’s stories at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
