parties. We, a bunch of farm kids, having the run of the fanciest of parties, the fanciest of fancy. Not only that, but did I mention also, she bought us our first pair of skates? The skates were a bit different from the ones the other kids, back at school in Grade One, would wear. Ours had no back support leaf. They were made in the same style as speed skate boots are made. We feared this might be a big deal to our friends at school. What if they laughed at our skates, skates bought with my aunt’s hard-earned money. The skates didn’t fit in with the rest of the skates there, worn on the outdoor ice rinks at school by our friends. Our skates must have been immigrant skates.
What we learned, quite inadvertently, from those upscale parties in Detroit, is how upper nobility conducted themselves in formal settings. We would imitate the act of it, sometimes even on the ice with our skates. When we got home to the farm in Maidstone Township, on the Puce Road on the night we got our first pair of skates, it was well past our bed time. But it didn’t matter to us. It didn’t even matter that we were told to go to bed. We hurried to lace up our skates, unsure if we would be allowed to go outside, after midnight and skate with them or if we would have to sleep with them on our feet that night.
Luckily, there was a mud puddle just outside of the house, there on the Puce Road, which had frozen over, a light blanket of snow on it. Our mother caved in. We could try the skates, but not for long. We ankle-bent our way over to the puddle, strode out too soon onto the ice and fell forward as the blade slid out on the slippery ice. This surprised us. We fell again. Then, we fell again and again. In a few minutes, we were bruised and battered. We fell on our knees. We fell on our elbows. We fell backwards and hit our heads on the ice and we fell on top of each other. But, it didn’t matter. We had skates and we were skating. We would be hockey players next. Our mother called at us over and over to come in.
“It is late,” she would say.
“We can’t come in,” we would reply. “We’re playing hockey,” and we would fall again.
After a considerable amount of time, she finally came out to get us.
“Watch this!” we said at the same time, slid out on the blades of our skates for the distance of a few feet, hit a stone with the blade of our skates and fell awkwardly to the ice. “We’re skating, mom,” we said together.
“I see that,” she answered. “I see you are skating now.”
2
WHY IT MATTERED MORE
“Canada is having a hard time of it in the early going,” we heard the announcer say through the noise of the crowd there at the Ambassador Auditorium. We watched as the Russians circled back, rifled deadly, accurate, long passes to each other and then gave quick, short, crisp passes to each other. When they went long, we seemed to be short. When they went short, we were long. They circled back and reorganized to attack over and over. Their open ice cycle confused us. We hadn’t used it since the days of the seventh man rover. We had dropped the rover and dropped the open ice cycle. Our players seemed to watch the Russian players, at times, mesmerized by them, just like we were.
“Our players have a better view of the game than we do,” my cousin said at one point. Our guys were watching the Russians play hockey rather than playing hockey against them.
The next winter, after we got our first pair of skates, we thought we were ready to play real hockey. We would walk across the plowed field, a mile or so, in our rubber boots, cross the Puce creek, usually break through the thin ice, melted by warm water run-off from the sewage lagoon further up stream, cross it, climb the now often snow-covered slippery bank of the Puce creek, usually taking several tries at it, before mastering the climb, usually losing a glove or a mitten or a hat and not wanting to go back down to the bottom of the creek to retrieve them. We would then walk the hundred feet or so to the reed-laden pond, on Gabe’s farm where several big guys could be counted on to have a hockey game started. Only we couldn’t tie our skates. We would lace them up, not knowing how to tie a shoe knot. We tried various tricks to keep them from falling off. The one we thought worked best was to wet the laces, let them freeze and tuck the excess inside the boot of our skate.
Then one day, we figured out what to do. Why not tie our skates at home and walk the mile or so across the plowed field to Gabe’s pond.
“Tie our skates for us dad (or mom),” we would say. “Please.”
Either of them would sit us down, pull the laces tight and actually secure them with knots. We were hockey players for sure now. Our skates didn’t even fall off of our feet. We had never heard of sharpening them, but they worked okay anyway, we thought. They worked okay, especially when the ice was soft or if a little layer of slush had formed on it. Our skates actually bit into it then. We had some stability.
“Why don’t they keep the ice that way all of the time?” we would ask ourselves. We didn’t even know there was a way to regulate ice temperature inside buildings. We didn’t even know they tried to keep the ice hard, and smooth, the kind of ice we hated as kids, because we couldn’t skate on it. We just knew it was often cold outside, there on the farm. In those days, it seemed there was always one friend with us. He was always willing to participate with us. His name was Poverty, and he was there on the farm, on Gabe’s pond, there with us, there with our pals, a loyal friend. But it didn’t matter to us. We were hockey players walking out the door of our farmhouse, with tight skates, skates that wouldn’t fall off of our feet, a Sunoco hockey stick in hand, bought for 99 cents, earned by picking ten baskets of tomatoes, earning ten cents per basket. We bought bubble gum with the extra penny.
We started across the yard in our skates. We crossed the gravel road, climbed through the ditch, got soaked, as the ice over the water broke through, climbed our way up the ditch bank and started the long journey across the plowed field, in the general direction of Gabe’s pond.
We didn’t know for sure if we were going in exactly the right direction because the snow lashed us. Ice pellets whipped at us. It was not snow. It was more like ice, driven at us by a cross wind. It blew in our face. It blew in our eyes. It blew all over and it swirled too. We looked up into the white sky and we looked at the white ahead, to the white on both sides of us. We looked back for home, but couldn’t find it. It was white in that direction too.
We walked and walked, sometimes falling down as we slid into the furrows and holes left by the uneven plowing. It took us an hour or so to reach the Puce creek. To our dismay, it was running water, fairly deep. There was no ice on it. We knew we could cross it by walking through it, but the water would be at least chest-deep. We looked around for something to use as a bridge to cross the creek, but couldn’t find anything. Then, we came across a heavy frozen tree limb. We pushed and tugged at it, like big forwards working in the corners, tugging and pulling at a branch that was much bigger than we were strong.
After a long time, we got it unstuck and rolled it to the water’s edge. We then held one end of the log and let the current push the other out over the water. We watched as it lodged on a sand bar. We started to cross it, unsure of ourselves. We carefully climbed out, reached the end of it, and jumped. We didn’t make the edge of the bank of the creek, but to our surprise, we were only ankle deep in water. We chopped through it like miniature football players going through tires, chopped onto the bank and kept chopping with our feet, all the way up the slippery bank. We had made it. We really were hockey players now.
We ran triumphantly to Gabe's pond, running as fast as we could toward the ice.
“Watch the ice,” Ed called, “we’ve gone through a few times.”
We didn’t even care. We ran onto it and really skated.
“Wait
