Sport: Indoor Winter

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Last year the U. S. discovered winter. Snow, for centuries man's enemy, became suddenly his friend. Skiing, for years a nonsensical fad, became overnight a national sport. Last week, not content with moving himself outdoors, man moved winter indoors. Hirelings in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, accustomed to the endless transformations of this chameleon edifice, stood aghast as they watched it become something it had never been before : a snowy mountain top. From the centre of the arena floor to the top of the gallery—so close to the roof a skier had to crouch so as not to bump his head— stretched a 152-ft, 45-degree ski slide, covered with artificial snow. Set in the white pavilion of the arena floor were two miniature skating ponds. It was New York's first wintersports show, patterned on wintersports shows in Boston last year and last fortnight.

In some respects the stage setting of a wintersports show is more remarkable than the show. A good deal of what the 12,000 winter-famished New Yorkers, who packed Madison Square Garden every night, watched last week they could have seen gratis on many a country hillside. Skiers shot off the slide in jumps about one-half as long as good outdoor jumps, gave demonstrations of rudimentary turns. Department store models tried and failed to live up to their skiing costumes. Fancy skaters whirled on the miniature rinks. In the steam-heated cellar below the snowdrifts, agents for innumerable winter resorts and ski-supply houses set up booths. Bug-eyed at these goings-on, spectators reserved special awe for the two items of the wintersports show that really explained why it was there. One was a snow machine, the other Hannes Schneider.

The snow machine was the contribution of Walter Brown, coach of the 1936 U. S. Olympic hockey team and son of George V. Brown, who runs Boston's Garden. Obsessed by the idea of a wintersports show in his father's amphitheatre, Walter Brown was foiled by the problem of how to get snow indoors without importing it at prohibitive expense until one day, passing a Boston fish store, he noticed a handsome cod packed in ice that was chopped up so fine it looked like corn snow. The fish dealer's iceman showed him his ice-grinding machine. Walter Brown ordered bigger copies that would grind ice smaller. Last week it took 500 tons of ice fed through grinders to keep the floor and ski slide snowy. During performances of the show, spectators were spellbound when workmen fed one of the machines 50-lb. chunks of ice, which it chewed into flakes, spewed out of a six-inch hose, as glittering, precious Snow.