Ice Skates in the 1940's

... at Dapp, as a young child ...

I asked Santa Claus for ice skates when I was little. He brought me bob skates.

My dad put them on me later Christmas day and I raced around the Hounsfield Heights Community rink, one foot over the other.

Then I asked my dad when I would get getting real skates – not the ones for babies.

I got real skates in January – beautiful white figure skates with new laces through the eyelets and hooks up the calf of my leg.  I couldn’t race around the rink as I could with the bob skates but I practiced faithfully and asked if I could take figuring skating lessons. The lessons were held once a week down at the Hillhurst Community Centre. I would walk over the 14th Street and then down the hill to 5th Avenue where a teacher would give progressively harder lessons -- how to use the inside curve of my skate blade and then the outside curve. I learned how to skate backwards, how to do figure 3’s and figure 8’s. Doing the swan was hard for me since it had to be done on one leg, using both the inside curve on one try and the outside on another. I would practice doing the spin and was so thrilled when the teacher explained the science of drawing my arms in from outstretched to closer to my body, making my spin go faster.

I can remember sitting by the potbelly stove in the shack, warming up my cold toes and fingers before I would go outside onto the rink to practice my figures again. I walked down to the rink every evening to practice. During free skating time music would play over the loudspeaker at the ring: “Oh how we danced on the night we were wed,” and the music from The Blue Danube or the Tennessee Waltz. I can still do the lyrics: I was dancing / with my darling / to the Tennessee waltz / when an old friend I happened to see / .....

Flood lights were positioned at all four corners of the rink. When darkness came – which is pretty early in December and January, we would skate around the edges of the rink while couples who were skating together would glide along the ice, holding each other’s hands, arms crossed. And some of them would waltz together in perfect dance position, one going forward, the other going backwards, their legs in perfect unison. I think I can still hear the crackle as their skate blades cut the ice.

We could skate at the Hounsfield Heights Community which was closer to our house – about 2 blocks away. There was a place we called “the shack”. A small hut with a pot-bellied stove where we could make a fire to warm up. I don’t know who brought wood, paid for electricity, or cleaned the ice off, though it must have been the whole Hounsfield Heights Community Association who took care of that. All I knew was to use it every night.

I can remember lots of this part of my life: lacing up the skates, too tight across the instep, extra socks to keep warm and the yearly ice review – costumes, fluted skirt that would really twirl in the circles.

I loved my skates.

I still had them when I got married.

Arta