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Show ! What's in a name ... i At I4: ' - ' ' V jL . ilig iliiisiiisiil n&mmfh ' i yx;M'y x' y:;:rtii:'!v - xx -'" by Ten Gomes On the first day of the ski season the lift tickets read WELCOME. Understand-ble. Understand-ble. On New Year's Day they said CELEBRATE. Logical. But how do you explain lift tickets that read TA-TA! or SPANKY or LAYERS? Actually, laughs Park City Ski Area ticket manager Sandy Scott, there are crazy explanations for all the names used on the tickets each day. TA-TA! she explained, "was done for a fellow employee who was leaving on a little vacation. SPANKY was the name of some guy's dog who worked here." What about LAYERS? "Sometimes we pick a theme and for several days we'll run something related. That was during the holidays and we had already run PARTRIDGE, 2 DOVES, 3 HENS, 4 BIRDS, and GOLDEN. LAYERS just seemed like the next logical step." Doing their part for local community theatre, the Ski Area often runs names that relate to the current stage play. At Christmas for example, when "You're a '. Good Man, Charlie Brown" ' was on, SNOOPY and LINUS ; ran on the tickets. There is a certain sensitiv- ' ity where the ticket names are concerned. And there is a studied attempt not to run anything that might be deemed offensive. During Thanksgiving, for example, the Ski Area ran YUM, FEAST, and GOBBLE. "But we would never run TURKEY, said Sandy, "for fear of it being misinterpreted." misinterpre-ted." Offensive, however, can all be in the eye of the beholder. Employees tell the tale of the trees. It seemed they were running a series of tree names one week: FIR, BIRCH, and EVERGREEN. "So," Sandy said, "it just seemed logical to run the name of the tree outside the office window: ASPEN. When top management people came to work that day they were outraged to find the name of a competitive ski , Myron Steinberg celebrates Gramps Day at the Park City Ski Area. area printed on their tickets!" Then there are the AWWW stories. Sometimes by special request they will print a name on a specific date you ask for. But only if it's very unique. Take, for example, the day they printed GRAMPS on all the tickets. It seems that several weeks in advance Park Record reporter Nan Chalat knew her 82-year-old grandfather grand-father (known to strangers and family alike as Gramps) would be in town to experience his first gondola ride. She requested the tickets for that day be printed in his honor. When the pair got to the Ski Area, Nan got his ticket at the window for the gondola and he saw GRAMPS printed on it. "He thought they had just printed up a single ticket for him at that point," said Nan, "and he was delighted." Upon reaching the gondola the older gentleman introduced intro-duced himself to the operator. opera-tor. "Hi, I'm Gramps." To which the operator replied, "Really? People have been asking all morning who GRAMPS is." "It was at that point I showed him that -all the tickets for the day had ' his name on them," Nan said. "He spent the rest of the morning at the Summit House introducing himself to people as the namesake on the ticket. And when he returned re-turned home he took his ticket with him to show all his buddies. It was really special." So if you understand the logic of a ticket that says CHILLY when the temperature tempera-ture has been minus anything, any-thing, and the reasoning for SUNNY when it's warm, don't try to figure out where BONZAI came from. But you can assume that when DAISY, LILY, and MUM appeared recently, it was a premature touch of spring fever that had hit the ticket office. |