That sassy headline was lifted from the lead paragraph of a great story in this 87-year-old magazine. Time, created by Henry Luce, was first published on March 3, 1923 followed by other great magazines — Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.

Time was the first weekly news magazine in the United States.

Our uncle, Tom Riley, who owned a 4,000 horse and cattle ranch one mile south of Carmel, California, sent us a Christmas gift in 1936; a subscription to Life magazine when it was first published on Nov. 23, 1936 … and every Christmas for many years after. Even as a kid, I devoured every copy — wish I still had that first copy.

So now, following are excerpts from this wonderful snow story:

“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 as it became 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 151-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 winter sports show, patterned on winter sports shows in Boston last year and last fortnight.

“In some respects the stage setting of a winter sports 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 skating costumes. Fancy skaters whirled on the miniature rinks.

“Bug eyed at the goings on, the spectators reserved special awe for the snow machine. The snow machine was the contribution of Walter Brown, coach of the 1936 U.S. Olympic hockey team [1936 Olympic Winter Games were held in Germany] – and son of George V. Brown, who runs Boston’s Garden. Obsessed by the idea of a winter sports show in his father’s amphitheatre, Walter Brown was foiled by the problem of how to make snow indoors without importing it at a prohibitive expense, until one day, passing a Boston fish market, he noticed a handsome cod packed in ice that was chopped so thin it looked like corn snow. The fish dealer’s iceman showed him his ice-grinding machine. Walter Brown ordered bigger ice machine 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 ice show, spectators were spellbound when workmen fed one of the machines with 50-lb. chunks of ice, which it chewed into flakes, spewed out of a six-inch hose, as glittering, precious snow.

“If the Brown machine made the winter sports show possible, Hannes Schneider was what made it profitable. To him, as head of the famed Arlberg Skiing School, more than to any other single person in the world, is attributable skiing’s current world-wide boom.”