began to practice hockey on any patch of frozen ice they could find. Tom, Jim and Randy always played against Don, John and Clare. The games didn’t end with nightfall either, as the boys fitted the puck into a salmon can so that it was easier to see in the moon light.
In summer, the boys would switch to road hockey and softball, always maintaining the same teams. John would say later that in all of the thousands of games they played, he never recalls his team winning a single game.
“Jim’s team always won,” John said as a matter of fact. And even though Jim was not the oldest player, he set the tone for the games.
But the game of organized hockey at Essex arena was entirely different. Don Lauzon summed up the feelings of the boys best when he said, “Is this ever neat. When you shoot the puck, you don’t have to walk into the field to get it.”
Still, it was not the men who were the driving force behind getting the boys into organized hockey. It was the mothers, Maxine and Mary Theresa. Ed and Red, for their part, went along with the idea.
When Jim started to play hockey at Essex arena, they had divided the rink in half. Jim was already shooting the puck through the net. The minor hockey officials quickly moved him up a division so he could play on full ice, then they moved him up again because of his dominance at that level.
Mary Theresa Lauzon was an aunt to Jim, and a sports enthusiast. One of her most important jobs in her youth was to listen to the Tiger games on the radio while the men worked in the fields. She would report every important development to them in glowing detail.
Red knew the hard part of life, having served as a prisoner of war in Germany after his capture in Europe.
“You might be surprised how all food tastes good when you’re starving,” is the little he would say about the experience.
When Essex arena opened in 1960, the boys were thrilled. The town had built a rink, but they didn’t have a Zamboni, so the boys hung around the rink for a long while on Saturday, anxious to go out onto the ice to help shovel the snow off of it for the next game.
One of Don’s favourite memories of those early years was the first time he saw Jim take a penalty shot.
“Hey, Ed! I’ll bet you a beer he doesn’t score.”
“He will score,” Ed said with confidence. Jim did, firing a hard low shot past the goalie before he could move.
Back at the Grade School, Tom admired the rink they were building.
“We had a good day,” Tom said to Jim after school, as they made their way toward the school bus.
“You guys have got quite a rink there,” Tom S., the bus driver exclaimed. “I’ll have to get my old skates out of the barn, sharpen them up with a file and show you guys a few tricks,” he said. Tom and Jim laughed.
“You probably could,” Jim said.
“You bet I can,” Tom S. said with a roll-your-own cigarette dangling from his lips. “And I don’t need a store-bought hockey stick to do it with either,” he added.
The construction continued for three more full days. Work started each day before school, during recess and especially at noon hour. Each student ate their lunch fast on those days, because the teacher wouldn’t let us leave our desk until they had finished lunch.
Within a couple of minutes, there was a steady chorus of, “Done my lunch, Miss,” as student after student got up, went to the back of the classroom, put on their coats and mitts, rubber boots and hats. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” some said with pride.
Construction was a lot slower now. The snowdrifts nearby had all been cut into blocks and carried away. The students now had to transport them all the way from the other side of the school, from the snow banks on the side of the ditch there. It was a long haul from the ditch to the skating rink and many of us had to take a break part way between the ditch and the rink, because the load was too heavy for the long trek. Some porters dropped their blocks too aggressively and watched them crumble into small pieces.
“What happened? Watch it,” the guys in the ditch doing the cutting would say when this happened.
“It’s hard to carry those blocks up out of the ditch you know,” they added. “Carrying them to the rink is the easy job. Don’t break them on the easy job!” they exclaimed.
Jim usually didn’t get involved in the discussions. He would just carry the blocks to the skating rink and return to the ditch to get more, never resting, always looking like he could easily carry more. Tom and Don noticed. They were now the head construction guys.
“Hey, Jim,” Don said, “How many trips have you made today?”
Jim just smiled. “About as many as you,” he said and returned to the ditch for another load. We were nearly finished when Don came along with a plastic sled, he had found in the ditch.
“Hey, guys,” he said, “blocks can be piled onto this thing and just pulled over.”
Everyone thought Don was a genius for discovering the sled, but we had pretty much emptied the ditch of blocks by now.
“I wish I had found it sooner,” Don said with a smile. “It would’ve saved you guys a lot of work.”
The rink was almost ready now. The ice was frozen. The boards made from blocks of snow formed a neat perimeter around the rink. It was a thing of beauty.
Then, at last, the announcement came that we were all waiting for. The rink was ready. But first they said, “we don’t want any young kids on the ice when we’re playing hockey. Someone might get hurt. No one under the Grade Five can play.” They all agreed. Someone added, “except for Jim that is. Jim is the best player here.”
Jim looked up at the older students who clearly admired him. After a short pause, he spoke.
“No way,” Jim said. “Joe worked all week building this rink. If he can’t play, I’m not going to play either.”
My heart stopped. I couldn’t believe my Grade Two friend, my hero Jim, would stick up for me that way. He hadn’t bought into the accolades that were thrown at him constantly. It certainly hadn’t affected his ego.
“Alright,” they all agreed. It wasn’t even an issue. I could play too.
VI—POM POM POLE AWAY
The best athletes are good at all sports, possibly because the fundamental principles are generally the same. For example, the basic formula, mass times acceleration equals force, is basic to all games. Jim was no exception to this rule. He showed his basic abilities even at a young age—in games as obscure as Pom Pom Pole Away, a game quite similar to British Bulldog, only we never called it that.
By Grade Four, Pom Pom Pole Away was an obsession with the students. Perhaps it was an early statement of our manhood. The game started with two people standing in the middle of a field with side boundaries set at the start of the game, usually about 100 feet apart. The field ran lengthwise measuring generally about 300 feet or so from fence to fence at the schoolyard.
The two people in the middle
