newspaper story about the first "cruel mistress"

the following is an article from the Fargo Forum, it was written just before the snow melted. I sold it soon after the article came out and was able to build the orange and white one in the other posts. I have started dreaming about the third one. Joe
Man’s dreams take wing
Tracy Frank
The Forum - 03/28/2008
Joe Jameson first saw a snowplane in 1962, when he was in fifth grade.
The Amenia, N.D., man has been enthralled with the machines ever since.

“I was walking through some deep snow and these tracks went right over it,” he said. “Then I saw a machine go flying by over the top of the snow that I was trudging through.”

As a child, Jameson built models that actually zipped across his yard.

“I was always fascinated by them.”

Forty-five years after his first snowplane sighting, Jameson built one of his own.

He started in November 2006 and finished, with a little help from some friends, by March 2007.

“It worked right from the start,” Jameson said. “Right from the turn of the key it was a success.”

Over the summer he painted it and installed a larger motor.

When Jameson told people he planned to build a snowplane, they became interested and gave him parts and materials, he said.

“A friend from Pennsylvania sent me the propeller,” he said. “There was a lot of moral support and encouragement.”

The snowplane slides along the snow on three skis pushed by an airplane propeller.

“It starts out with the noise of the motor speeding up, and then it just slides away,” Jameson said. “It has a suspension, so it just floats on top of the snow.”

The vehicle, which travels at about 40 mph and can hold two adults, maneuvers more like a boat than a car, Jameson said. It has a Subaru motor, and a heater and blower fan mounted in its nose.

“It kind of brings out the child in anyone who rides in it,” Jameson said.

He’s working on another snowplane that will be more compact than the first one but with the same amount of power.

So far he has the motor, propeller, skis and steering.

“I build them mostly out of odds and ends and recycled material,” Jameson said.

Jameson said he is willing to sell the one he has now for money toward his second snow plane.

“They’re really a novelty, so there’s not much demand for them,” Jameson said.

Snowplanes were popular in the 1930s through 1960s, he said. Postal workers and doctors in Canada used them to get around before highway systems were built, he said.

They were also used for hunting before being replaced by snowmobiles, Jameson said.

“It’s real novel. People just don’t build snowplanes anymore,” said Bob Sagen, who let Jameson use his shop, Shocker Hitch, in Arthur, N.D., to build part of the vehicle.

Sagen said it was fun to see the snowplane coming together.

As exciting as it was to see the snowplane work for the first time, Jameson said it is even more thrilling to share it with others.

“What’s given me the greatest pleasure is seeing children and other people ride in it,” Jameson said. “That’s probably been my biggest joy of having it.”