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| ... I spent a lot of time keeping my skates looking unscuffed with liquid white polish. And it is hard to explain the joy of skating on them after they had been newly sharpened ... |
I don’t remember when I got my first pair, but thereafter I got a new pair every Christmas.
That was a given. I was growing taller.
My feet were growing longer.
Skating was as a big part of my winter evenings.
The Hounsfield Heights Association built a small hut and kept a skating ring flooded and cleared and well lit.
There was a spotlight so that we could practise in the dark.
As well there was a pot-bellied stove in which I could build a fire, so that I could come inside, warm myselfs up and then be off to the rink when my toes got warm again. Wood was always stacked in the corner. I wonder now who was flooding the ring and bring the wood in.
The Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Association which was down on 5th Avenue had a bigger rink, larger facilities in which to keep warm, even a canteen, and the association offered skating lessons where I could learned to turn figure eights and practised making a swan, though for me it was often a swan dive. At first the trick was learning to skate backwards. And then to put one leg over the leg as I went backwards and in a circle, always keeping a look-out as to what was behind me. If I think about it I can still smell that cut of fresh ice made with a sudden stop and that breeze on my face when I would try to skate my fastest from one end of the rink to another.
My childhood dream then, was to skate in the Ice Capades, which our family got to attend every year. A little person can’t dream much higher than that.
Arta
I didn't learn how to stop, other than running into the boards on ice, until I skated in Florida in December in 2001. The temperature was in the 70Fs according to the Farmer's Almanac. The city created ice for a day and offered free skating to the public to give a Christmas feel. I had never seen people skate in shorts and sleeveless shirt before outside in December. No boards for running in to, so I had to learn how to stop.
ReplyDeleteI used to have Kelvin flood the back yard with water in the winter, and then there would be a small skating rink for my kids. I thought they might love skating as much as I did. Now that I think of it, they didn't get the advantage of that small fire in a wooden hut, to go along with the skating.
ReplyDeleteI must not have still been asking him to do that by the time you could wear skates. Thanks for the image of running into the boards to stop. Ouch.
When the Olympic arena opened up, I went over there and took speed skating lessons. I would have been about 48 years old then. I found it hard to skate and not have the advantage of the pics at the end of the figure skates.
I took a fall backwards and had no helmet on. That was the end of my lessons and the beginning of my visits to a dr to find out why I was having so many headaches. We finally decided I might have given myself a concussion in the fall. And that was the end of my desire to get really good at speed skating. At least I got the desire to do speed skating off my bucket list.
A great story. I have a similar one but the means of propelling myself on frozen water was cross-country skiis at around the same age.
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