If you didn't have the clamp, a metal claspy contraption, you were doomed. If you were a kid, you were doomed anyway. The first thing that would happen is your forearms would cramp. This was before you had forearms or if you had forearms, you didn't have enough of them to stay on the rope tow. Then exhaustion and despair set in as you realized that not only were you not going to make it, but in failing to do so, you were going to ski backwards and at least wipe out the person behind you, probably your brother.
Rope tows are a thing of the past, replaced by two snappy, two-passenger chair lifts.
Along with the chairs, Shirley Meadows has a ski rental store as well as a cozy warming hut with picnic tables and an open wood-burning stove surrounded by half a dozen chairs and a loose stack of oak logs beside it. The scale is right. Shirley Meadows is the Kern County Fair. Better yet, the school carnival. Easy starts with getting there.