Ninth of a series of excerpts from Gerry Miller’s book “Crotched Mountain Ski Area in Francestown, New Hampshire,” a history/biography about the original Crotched Mountain Ski Area in Francestown, developed by William C. (Bill) MacAdam and syndicate. Miller grew up in Francestown. Much of the material for the book was from the Monadnock Ledger or Peterborough Transcript.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Tim and Marny Gannett and their son Tim expanded the offerings far beyond skiing, always focused on bringing skiers and non-skiers to the mountain for fun, for the opportunity to spend time with family and friends and to make new friends. Marny Gannett recalls their efforts.

The Easter parades were always a big hit at the end of the ski season. “One year we made a giant cardboard Easter basket. The kids wore rabbit ears, and pajamas with tails pinned on. The following year was ‘The Old Woman in the Shoe.’ We built a huge cardboard shoe, which we painted and decorated with flowers and cutout windows. All the ragamuffin kids, carried the shoe and stuck their heads out of the windows. Those parades in the snow were always fun, and of course, everyone skied in their Easter costumes.”

After ski season, corporate outings helped keep the lights on. The Gannetts wooed GE, IBM, Sanders (now part of BAE Systems) and other big players to summer and fall fun on the mountain.

“We wined and dined them all day. Guests loved the chair lift rides, hay rides by Silver Ranch in Jaffrey, bingo, hot tubs, games, music and huge barbecues, clam and lobster bakes. Some guests even swam in the pond,” Gannett said.

The summer of 1975, Edith Stearns, “Ebs” to her friends, was sick and couldn’t host the plays. Stearns had founded The Peterborough Players in 1933, and actors thrilled audiences every summer for decades. But that summer, the stage remained dark. In response, the Gannetts hired The Theatre Company of New England, and summer theater lovers drove to the ski mountain in Francestown.

“We held the plays beneath a big yellow and white striped tent between the parking lot and the front door of the lodge. Our cat walked across the stage one evening during a performance. I almost died! During intermissions, the guests browsed the beautiful handcrafted items in the upstairs lodge. We held craft fairs in the upper level of the lodge for several summers,” Gannett remembers.

Locals also loved the summer concerts. “We worked with The Folkway to bring outdoor concerts to Crotched. There were so many remarkable musicians: Odetta, Bill Staines, Lui Collins, Josh White. Our plans for an October music festival in 1978 caused quite a stir. The town fathers of Francestown were horrified by our proposal. They believed it would be another Woodstock. They made all sorts of regulations; how many people could come, how many police should be brought in and all that. At the final meeting Tim said to them, ‘Well, I have to tell you, there’s someone else who’s coming.’” They gasped and wondered what wild musician we had added, and Tim said, “My mother.” Tim’s mother  was a state legislator in Boston.”

“All the big folk names came out and we had to limit the attendance. After all of our planning, tent and sound system setup and more, it snowed! We had to move the whole concert upstairs in the Lodge. The next year, it snowed again. Still, they were wonderful festivals, especially the first one. After the last musician sang her final song, all of a sudden the musicians started to sing from every corner of the lodge. They jammed and it was exhilarating and magical! It was really very, very special, because it was so intimate.”

Music was a constant during ski season as well.

“We often had a German band that played upstairs in the bar. I can't remember their name; we called them the Oompa Loompa or something like that. We all just loved them,” Gannett recalled.

The Gannetts worked hard to keep people coming to Crotched Mountain for skiing and riding, for concerts, fairs, car shows and more, but profits were not guaranteed.

“We were always fighting the weather: lack of snow, too warm, rain. Plus the gas shortages that kept people home,” Gannett explained.

One such weather disaster followed months of prep for a huge extravaganza to support muscular dystrophy research. The contract stipulated that Crotched Mountain guarantee the organization a minimum $6,000. Driving rain and punishing winds killed the event and the Gannetts had to pay up.

Unrealized gains from the more than 100 Crotched Mountain East and West condominiums and houses built in the 1980s also contributed to the company’s debt.

As was the case with previous owners, the debt continued to mount year after year, no matter how hard they worked. No matter how many improvements were made. Crotched Mountain was again bankrupt. Both the Bennington and the Francestown ski areas closed after the 1989/90 ski season. It was a painful end for everyone. It was anyone’s guess whether either ski mountain would ever open again.